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‘SARAH STUYVESANT, GO TO YOUR ROOMl» ** 









SARAH THE LESS 



By 

SOPHIE SWETT 

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Author of ** The Boy From Beaver Hollow,'^ etc* 



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PHILADELPHIA 
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS 


1902 



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Two Copies Receiveo 

APR. 24 1902 

COPVRieMT ENTRY 

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COPY 


Copyright, 1902, by The Trustees of 
The Presbyterian Board of Publication and 
Sabbath-School Work. 


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SARAH THE LESS 


CHAPTER I 

O OME one in this family must amount to 
something, and I am afraid it will 
not be Absalom; he is so queer.” 
Sarah Rogers sighed, as, sitting on a 
stool beside her mother’s worktable, she 
looked up into Uncle Abram’s rugged, 
world-and-weather-worn face and delivered 
herself very positively of this sentiment. 

Uncle Abram’s rugged wrinkles relaxed. 
They seldom relaxed, and you couldn’t guess 
when they were going to. He even chuckled 
slightly. He was always inclined to be a 
little, lenient toward Absalom’s “queerness”; 
although one would have thought it just the 
kind of queerness that he could not tolerate. 
“I can’t have mother sew herself to death,” 
said Sarah, and her sixteen-year-old face and 

5 


6 


SARAH THE LESS 


voice were the more despairing for that 
chuckle of Uncle Abram’s, which reminded 
her of a complaint of Orinda Jenks, his 
housekeeper, that “sometimes he didn’t ap- 
pear to have a realizin’ sense.” 

If it were possible. Uncle Abram must be 
made to have a realizing sense. 

“Mother isn’t willing that I should sew, 
because she thinks it hurts me,” pursued 
Sarah; and now her tone was an aggrieved 
one. “And there isn’t any other chance for 
me unless” — 

“She has got a narrow chest like the 
Rogerses. I can’t have her sew ; it always 
makes her cough,” said Sarah’s mother, 
quickly. Sarah’s father had died of consump- 
tion. “If it hadn’t been for paying off the 
mortgage, I expect I could have sent her 
to the Highbury Seminary, myself, by this 
time,” she added, with a little touch of pride. 
It came hard, as she said to herself, to ask 
favors of Abram. 

“Learning costs, and it ain’t always what 
it’s cracked up to be,” said Uncle Abram, 
sententiously. “I always managed to dis- 
pense without it, and my brother Charles 
that went to college always said he had five 


SARAH THE LESS 


7 


hundred dollars’ worth more than ever done 
him any good.” 

“I could pay you all that it would cost; 
I’m sure I could !” said Sarah, eagerly, and 
swallowing desperately a lump in her throat 
that meant pride and fear and all such hin- 
dering things. 

“Paying up is pretty sure to come harder 
than what you think for,” said Uncle Abram. 
“Between promise day and pay day there is 
as great a gulf fixed as there was between 
Dives and Lazarus.” 

You believed that all hard things were 
true when Uncle Abram said them. His 
wrinkles seemed to vouch for them, and his 
harsh voice. Nevertheless, Sarah persevered. 

“I would be so economical ; it wouldn’t 
cost very much,” she said. 

“Dressing up and having receptions is 
what appears to be mostly going on in the 
schools and colleges that the gals go to, 
nowadays,” continued Uncle Abram, uncom- 
promisingly. “If you could go as your Aunt 
Mehitabel went to the Hebron Academy 
when she was a gal, why that would be 
worth talking about. She and another gal 
hired a room and boarded themselves. We 


8 


SARAH THE LESS 


sent ’em provisions from the farm, and it 
didn’t cost anything to speak of. Young 
folks had to fight and wrestle for an educa- 
tion in them days.” 

“I would do that — oh, I would do that!” 
cried Sarah, breathlessly. “Then you would 
have to lend me so little ! And I would 
pay for everything — everything I — that was 
sent me.” 

Uncle Abram looked reflective, but the 
rigidity of his wrinkles was scarcely pro- 
pitious. Sarah rose and stood beside her 
mother’s chair; it seemed like a rampart 
from which one could more successfully as- 
sail the enemy ; and she meant to conquer 
Uncle Abram if it were a possible thing. 
For she must have an education, and there 
was nothing that a girl could do to earn 
money in Gilboa. One could not even knit 
stockings, now, because the factories supplied 
the market, and the summer visitors seemed 
to have tired of hooked rugs, even if one 
made them after an oriental pattern. , 

Even if her mother had been willing that 
she should sew, there was not enough dress- 
making for them both, now that two newer 
and more fashionable dressmakers had come 


SARAH THE LESS 


9 


to town and more and more people went, 
every year, to the city for their clothes. 

Gilboa’s primitive conditions were changing 
since the manufactories had come. One 
would think that Uncle Abram might see the 
practical necessities of the case ; Sarah had 
set them before him plainly enough. And 
she had, with what she felt to be the wisdom 
of the serpent, refrained from mentioning to 
him that longing for book lore which had 
possessed her ever since she had learned her 
letters. Uncle Abram constantly avowed his 
belief that learning was “something that folks 
could dispense without.” 

“It is a very different world from what it 
was when Mehitabel went to the Hebron 
Academy and did for herself,” said Mrs. 
Rogers, with a touch of asperity. “Sarah is 
willing and she’s smart. I should miss her 
dreadfully about the trimmings ; she has a 
knack for trimming that I never had — but 
whether she could stand it to live that way 
and go to such a fashionable school as 
Highbury Seminary, I don’t know. I 
shouldn’t want her to go there, anyway, if 
it wasn’t the only school near home. There 
would be so many mortifications.” 


lO 


SARAH THE LESS 


'‘I don’t mind mortifications; not a bit,” 
said Sarah, stoutly. 

Mrs. Rogers was verging upon tears — 
which Uncle Abram hated. He found Sarah’s 
undaunted spirit a pleasing contrast, and was, 
perhaps, unconsciously influenced by it. He 
shuffled uneasily in his chair. 

“I expect nothing but what Orindy would 
spend all her time cooking up for you,” he 
said, grumblingly. 

Then Sarah had an inspiration and as- 
sumed that he had consented. “Thank you 
very much. Uncle Abram,” she said. “You’ll 
see that I will pay you. And I can cook. 
Orinda needn’t cook a single thing for me !” 

No one had ever before taken Uncle 
Abram’s consent for granted, and he drew 
his shaggy eyebrows together in surprise. 
But he had, nevertheless, a subtle sense of 
having been helped out of a difficulty. There 
was some “smartness” about this niece of his. 
Since he had no children of his own, perhaps 
he might as well do a little something for 
his brother John Henry’s daughter. She did 
seem to understand that if she was going to 
a fashionable school she must do without 
frills and furbelows. 


SARAH THE LESS 


1 1 

“There was Laban Hotchkiss who went 
through Bowdoin College on Injin meal,” he 
said, reflectively. And Sarah knew that she 
had gained the day. 

“Laban Hotchkiss never had a mite of 
health afterwards,” said Sarah’s mother. For 
she thought that Abram, being the richest 
farmer in Gilboa, might send Sarah to school 
and pay her board decently. 

“Oh, ’sh — ’sh!” murmured Sarah, and gave 
her a little warning pinch. 

Uncle Abram was going out. He thought 
he had made concessions enough for one 
morning, and the details of the plan could 
wait. Moreover, he was a little afraid that 
his niece’s smartness might lead him farther 
than he meant to go. He turned back at 
the door to respond to his sister-in-law’s 
reminiscence of Laban Hotchkiss. 

“Folks that hain’t got a constitution to 
stand living on Injin meal had better not try 
to get an education,” he said, gruffly. 

But there was one good thing about 
Uncle Abram : he always kept his word. So 
Sarah was not afraid that her prospects 
would be ruined by her mother’s indiscretion. 

Sarah danced for joy and hugged her 


12 


SARAH THE LESS 


mother, and immediately proceeded to wind 
her long braid into a coil. Not even in the 
morning, at home, must she look so youthful 
and irresponsible again. But her mother 
could not be moved to responsive joy. 

“I shall never think of you as having a 
decent meal,” she wailed. “And how can 
you study when you have to cook? and how, 
in a fashionable school like that, will you get 
a roommate?” 

“A roommate?” Sarah had not thought of 
that. 

“I could not bear to think of you as living ‘ 
all alone; you are not that kind,” continued 
her mother. “I don’t suppose that any of 
those fashionable girls would associate with 
you, to say nothing of living with you in 
that way.” 

“I can live alone ! I can do anything for 
the sake of going! Mother, you don’t un- 
derstand how much I want to go 1” cried 
Sarah. 

Her mother looked at her and sighed a 
little, the sigh of the mother who recognizes 
in her child the alien, only half-understood, 
characteristics of “the other side.” 

“There never was a Rogers that wouldn’t 


SARAH THE LESS 


13 


go through fire and flood to get what he 
had set his heart on,” she said to herself. 
“Well, I suppose you’ll have to go. I only 
hope your Uncle Abram will not be too 
stingy.” She sighed again, perhaps with a 
recollection of Laban Hotchkiss and his 
“Injin meal.” 

Sarah went over to see Uncle Abram the 
next day. She wanted to have things set- 
tled. She was that kind. So was Uncle 
Abram. It was a Rogers trait, as Sarah’s 
mother would have said. Sarah met him on 
the way to see her. 

“I’ve made up my mind that I’ll pay your 
tuition and your room rent and allow you a 
fair amount of provisions for a middlin’-sized 
gal, like you,” he said. 

This was one of the somewhat rare occa- 
sions when Uncle Abram was sufficiently 
good-natured to be facetious. Sarah was 
very tall, and it pleased him to have her so, 
for that was, also, a Rogers characteristic. 

“I’ll take your mother and you over to 
Highbury next week, and we can see the 
principal and pick out the room,” he con- 
tinued. Sarah heaved a sigh of relief. There 
was a satisfaction in this promptness. There 


14 SARAH THE LESS 

was, really, a kindly gleam in the eyes that 
looked out from under the old man’s shaggy 
eyebrows. Sarah felt, for the first time, 
something akin to tenderness in the tie of 
relationship that bound her to Uncle Abram. 

“I’ll be over next Wednesday morning at 
nine o’clock sharp,” said Uncle Abram, as he 
turned his horse round. 

“I think I’ll go over and see Orinda for 
a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” said 
Sarah, and Uncle Abram allowed her to get 
into the wagon. 

“You can pay me just as soon as you get 
to school-keeping.” That was the only re- 
mark that Uncle Abram made on the way. 

Orinda was mounted on a stepladder on 
the porch, picking hops from the vine that 
curtained it, to make a pillow to sleep on 
when she had neuralgia. Orinda always had 
neuralgia when the wind was east, and at 
that time, too, the kitchen stove would not 
draw. She explained to Sarah before she 
came down from the ladder that she felt as 
if she ought not to subject her Christian 
grace to such a strain as “them two things 
cornin’ together,” if she could help it. 

Sarah was glad that Uncle Abram went 


SARAH THE LESS 


15 


immediately out to the back pasture to see 
to some colts that he was raising, for she 
wished to see Orinda alone. 

Orinda had been Uncle Abram’s house- 
keeper ever since Sarah could remember, and 
had always been a devoted friend to her. 
There was no one to whom she felt more 
inclined to confide her happiness than to 
Orinda. 

'T hope he’ll send you plenty,” said 
Orinda, when she had heard how Sarah was 
to live. “Anyhow, I’ll remember you when- 
ever I do a bakin’. I’ll look out for you — 
never you fear!” 

“That’s just what I wanted to see you 
about. You mustn’t do it!” said Sarah, 
positively. “Uncle Abram said you would, 
and he didn’t like it. I could see that he 
had half a mind not to let me go, on that 
account. I am determined to do everything 
for myself that I possibly can. I’ll not let 
mother send me anything that is cooked. 
Promise me — promise me, solemnly, Orinda, 
that you’ll not !” 

“Why — why, land sake ! it seems a livin’ 
shame! You poor little cretur!” Orinda’s 
black eyes flashed and grew misty as she 


1 6 SARAH THE LESS 

looked commiseratingly at the “poor little 
cretur” who towered half a head above her. 
“When I’m bakin’ a batch of pies or fryin’ 
a pan of doughnuts, I might jest as well 
send you some as not. When I roast a 
chicken or a turkey, it’s only a pickin’, as 
you might say, that me and your uncle eats. 
And he ain’t so close as some, not so close 
as what you’d think he might be about 
victuals.” 

“He showed very plainly that he didn’t 
want you to do it. It — it’s the greatest 
thing for me, Orinda !” Sarah spoke with 
almost breathless eagerness, and a sudden 
pink wave nearly drowned the little brown 
freckles that were the bane of her life. “The 
greatest thing — this going away to school ! 
There’s no other way in which I can make 
something of myself and help mother and 
Absalom. I can trim well, better even than 
mother, but she thinks I’m not strong 
enough to be a dressmaker, and you know 
I always took to books. It’s the only way, 
and I can’t bear to have anything hinder 
me. What do I care what I eat?” Sarah 
made a fine gesture of contempt, and puck- 
ered her smooth brow, impatiently. 


SARAH THE LESS 


17 

“Learnin ' and dyspepsy are some apt to 
go together,” murmured Orinda. But Sarah 
did not heed. 

‘'I can cook for myself, perfectly well, the 
little that I need,” she continued. “And if 
you really want to be kind to me, Orinda, 
you’ll promise me that you’ll not send me a 
single thing that you’ve cooked.” 

“Why, if that has got to be the way of 
it and is what you really want me to do, of 
course. I’ll promise,” said Orinda. “But I 
don’t like it a mite.” 

“Uncle Abram will send me just what he 
chooses — potatoes and meal and such things; 
and I shan’t starve and you needn’t worry.” 
Sarah smiled brightly and laid a comforting 
hand on Orinda’s arm. 

“He’ll not pamper you none,” said Orinda, 
dryly. “When he’s sendin’ out that way, 
he’s considerable closer than what he is when 
it’s cookin’ up for the house. But there ! 
he may remember that you’re his niece. 
He’s some peculiar, your Uncle Abram is. 
When you think you’ve got him all by heart, 
you’ll find out, all of a sudden, that you 
don’t know any more about him than you 
do about heathen mythology!” 


2 


I 8 SARAH THE LESS 

‘‘Orinda, don’t you try to make him do 
anything for me, but just what he has a 
mind to do,” said Sarah, earnestly. 

She went home with a mind set at ease 
by Orinda’s reluctant promise. Although it 
was reluctant, one could rely upon Orinda. 

Uncle Abram drove Sarah and her mother 
to Highbury in his ancient carryall. It was 
so ancient a carriage that they got into' it 
after a gingerly fashion, expecting it to go 
to pieces like the “one-hoss shay.” Judy, 
the old mare, hitched herself along carefully, 
as if she expected that the same fate might 
befall her. 

Uncle Abram had attired himself with a 
due regard for the fashionableness of High- 
bury Seminary, to the relief of Sarah’s 
mother, who had feared that he might go, 
as he was in the habit of going to High- 
bury, in the clothes he wore about the farm. 

Uncle Abram was an antiquated figure in 
his shiny broadcloth suit, his high silk hat 
of a very ancient style, and a satin stock 
that reached to the tip of his ears. He al- 
ways assumed an air of dignity and a solemn 
demeanor with these clothes, perhaps because 
he was in the habit of wearing them only to 


SARAH THE LESS 


19 


church, and Sarah felt, vaguely, but with 
gratification, that Uncle Abram looked like 
a gentleman. She did not share her 
mother’s fears that the seminary girls would 
laugh at him ; she thought she would not 
care for girls so ill-bred and so little dis- 
criminating as to do that. 

It was the beginning of the fall term, and 
the regular routine of school work had not 
yet commenced. When the visitors were 
ushered into the reception room, groups of 
gay girls were overflowing the piazzas and 
halls, and their laughter and chatter came 
from every side like the sound of many 
magpies. 

The principal was stately, but extremely 
aflable, not affected, as Sarah’s mother had 
feared, by the homespun appearance of the 
party. She said she was very sorry that she 
was not to have Miss Rogers in the house; 
the influence of earnest pupils being much 
needed there. Sarah wondered how she 
knew that she was going to be an earnest 
pupil, and thought it was probably because 
her height made her look old for her years. 

There was no difficulty about terms, al- 
though Sarah’s mother afterwards confided 


20 


SARAH THE LESS 


to her that she was “hot and cold for fear 
Uncle Abram would beat her down.” So 
far was he from doing so that he paid a 
quarter’s tuition in advance, and he only re- 
marked, doubtfully, as he did so, that he 
expected that “it would be the gal’s own 
fault if she didn’t get the money’s worth.” 

He made this remark as they were going 
out of the reception room, and two girls in 
the hall heard it and looked at each other 
with a giggle. Sarah had thought that she 
would not mind, but her face burned. 

There was a group of giggling girls whose 
attention seemed to be centered in a con- 
strained and uneasy fashion upon a very 
plump girl who was seated upon a reception 
chair in the hall. 

“Get up, Lora Bangs! Oh, dear, I never, 
never meant you to do it 1 I didn’t think 
you really would I” This voice came from a 
small, stylishly-dressed girl who came flying 
through the hall and jerked the plump girl 
from her seat. 

Sarah knew almost by intuition what had 
happened, before the plump girl’s rising re- 
vealed the shapeless mass that had been, for 
more than ten years. Uncle Abram’s Sunday 


SARAH THE LESS 


21 


hat. He had felt that it was not etiquette 
to carry his hat into the reception room, 
and so had deposited it on a chair in the 
hall. 

“Oh, I — I didn’t think it would be so alto- 
gether smashed!” murmured the plump girl. 
“I wouldn’t have, — only she said it would be 
such fun!” 

Miss Almy, the principal, ignored the 
plump girl, after one withering glance, and 
turned her attention to the small, stylish girl 
in the background. 

“Sarah Stuyvesant, go to your room!” she 
said, in an annihilating tone. “It is gener- 
ally easy to guess where the responsibility 
for misconduct rests,” she added; “although 
I will admit that I supposed you incapable 
of such vulgar mischief as this.” 

Sarah looked after the small figure, silently 
mounting the stairs, with a feeling of pity. 
It had been a silly and dreadful thing to 
advise Lora Bangs to do, but she didn’t like 
Lora Bangs who was so ready to lay all the 
blame on her adviser. She pulled out and 
smoothed out UncJ^e Abram’s hat until it 
was possible for him to put it on. 

“I trust you will not fear the influences 


22 


SARAH THE LESS 


here for your daughter — your niece,” the 
principal said, anxiously, to the visitors. “I 
had hoped that Sarah Stuyvesant would not 
return, as she is a ringleader in mischief. 
I shall now feel it to be my painful duty to 
expel her.” 

To be expelled ; — what a dreadful thing ! 
How would the girl bear it? thought Sarah 
Rogers. She had only told the other girl 
that it would be fun to sit upon Uncle 
Abram’s hat. It was Sarah’s opinion that 
the other girl was the more to blame. 

But how could any girls be so foolish — 
girls who had such a great opportunity, such 
a chance to learn, and without any struggle 
at all? thought Sarah. 

Probably they had no one who needed 
their help, whom they longed to help as she 
longed to help her mother and Absalom. 
But they needn’t be so childish. Why, they 
would scorn to play so silly a prank as that 
in the Gilboa Grammar School ! 

In the carriage. Uncle Abram took off his 
hat and regarded it ruefully. 

‘T’m glad that gal is going to be expelled. 
Sarah might get more than her money’s 
worth of learning manners,” he said. 






SARAH GAZED AT HERSELF ADMIRINGLY.*’ PAGE 43 




CHAPTER II 


I could have lived as you do, out- 
J[ side of the school, it never would 
have happened,” said Sarah Stuyve- 
sant. “Oh, I wish I could live with you; 
you are so strong and sensible ! I believe 
that Miss Almy would let me stay now, if 
you would let me live with you. You said 
you would like to have a roommate ; oh, 
would you have me? Say you will and ask 
her to let me stay as a day pupil !” Sarah 
Stuvesant’s small, miserable, tear-stained face 
was raised appealingly to Sarah Rogers’ calm 
and somewhat severe one. 

Sarah Rogers had been a day pupil at the 
school for a month, keeping house for her- 
self in two rooms in a dingy old house 
on one of the Highbury side streets — 
room rent was expensive from Uncle 
Abram’s point of view. In the trying social 
world of a girl’s school Sarah’s straightfor- 
ward simplicity and indifference to everything 
but the end she had in view served her in 
good stead. The few girls who were in- 

23 


24 


SARAH THE LESS 


dined to scorn Gilboa looks and ways, and 
regard with contemptuous wonder a girl who 
“did for herself” in two rooms — a plan of 
living hitherto quite unknown to Highbury 
Seminary, respected the serene independence 
that quite ignored the possibility of being 
ashamed of her humble way of living, and 
enjoyed the easy good-fellowship that came 
of her country training. 

There is always a schoolgirl freemasonry 
between good students, and they were the 
good students who immediately became Sarah 
Rogers’ friends — with one exception. Oddly 
enough that exception was Sarah Stuyve- 
sant, the girl who was held responsible for 
the untimely end of Uncle Abram’s hat, and 
who was under sentence of banishment from 
the school — a sentence which was not im- 
mediately carried out only because her 
mother was living abroad and the uncle to 
whom she was to go was too ill to receive 
her. 

Sarah Stuyvesant had made the advances 
toward an acquaintanceship by apologizing, 
with tears, for the ruin of Uncle Abram’s 
hat. 

“I saw you look as if you pitied me that 


SARAH THE LESS 


25 


day. That’s why I dared to speak to you,” 
she said. 

‘T think I wondered at you more than I 
pitied you,” returned Sarah Rogers, candidly. 
‘T saw that you were about as old as I, 
and it seemed to me a childish thing to do; 
not funny at all. But yet the other girl 
needn’t have done it ; and she threw the 
blame all upon you.” 

Sarah Rogers stood looking down upon 
the smaller Sarah as severely as a young 
Daniel come to judgment. 

'‘They do that always because they think I 
don’t mind; and I do put them up to things 
— silly, senseless things like that, very often. 
I do it because it’s so monotonous here. 
You see. I’m quick and do my lessons easily, 
and there’s nothing else to do. I’ve never 
been to school since I was a child, until last 
year. I lived in Paris with mother, and we 
were always gay. Now she is married again 
and she wanted to get rid of me, so she sent 
me here to school. Uncle Harold doesn’t 
want me, either. He is an old bachelor, 
living alone. He will get me a governess 
and shut me up so that I shall scarcely see 
the light of day. Oh, I wish Miss Almy 


26 


SARAH THE LESS 


would let me stay here and room with you! 
I couldn’t contaminate the girls, then. And 
you are so strong and sensible, she would 
know I couldn’t hurt you. You ask her!” 

The color rose to Sarah Rogers’ face, as 
she looked down at the dainty, elegant little 
figure that clung to her. It was always a 
dainty and elegant little figure, for even 
Sarah’s school frocks were sent to her from 
Paris. 

''You don’t understand how I live,” she 
said. "Your world has been such a different 
one from mine. My mother is a dress- 
maker, and we have to live on what she 
earns. My uncle, who is a farmer, is lend- 
ing me the money to come to school, and 
I am trying to get along with very little. 
He sends me provisions — potatoes and Indian 
meal and things from his farm, and I cook 
things — johnnycake, chiefly.” Johnnycake 
was the staple article of Sarah’s diet, for in 
her earliest zeal she had been stimulated by 
the example of Laban Hotchkiss. 

"Oh, how delightful! and you would teach 
me?” cried Sarah Stuyvesant. "With such 
things as that to take up my mind I should 
never get into mischief, never!” 


SARAH THE LESS 


27 


Sarah’s heart warmed to the eager pleader. 
Moreover, she sorely longed for human com- 
panionship. Often she had thought that the 
queer little housekeeping would seem quite 
like a picnic if there were but another girl 
to share it. 

“I shouldn’t be willing that you should 
get anything different,” she said, sternly. “I 
couldn’t share any more expensive living, and 
I couldn’t — accept anything from you.” 

“Oh, I understand !” The smaller Sarah 
wagged her head, knowingly. “You are 
proud in your way; well, independent, if you 
like to call it so. As for me, I should sim- 
ply dote on johnnycakes and potatoes. And 
I am not rich — oh, not at all ! I have a 
very small allowance, a mere pittance. 
Mother and I managed to live on very little 
in Paris. Now she has married an artist, who 
only sells his pictures once in a while, and she has 
to cut me down. I haven’t had a decent gown 
sent me for a year — not for a year !” 

Sarah Rogers glanced involuntarily from 
her gingham blouse and her old cashmere 
skirt, turned and pieced, to the stylish, 
daintily-made gown that adorned the other 
Sarah’s small figure. 


28 


SARAH THE LESS 


“It’s only that mother has a real genius 
for bargains,” said Sarah Stuyvesant, in an- 
swer to the glance. “And she fairly tram- 
ples on dressmakers. It’s the only way with 
those people ! Oh — oh — I forgot that you 
said” — She stopped in dismay, her face 
grown scarlet. 

“That I said my mother was a dressmaker? 
I’m not in the least sensitive about it,” said 
Sarah Rogers, quietly. “I should have been 
one if it had not hurt me to sew.” 

“Of course it is different, very different, 
here in New England,” said Sarah Stuyve- 
sant, quickly. “I was thinking of the Paris 
dressmakers.” 

“Your world has been a different one from 
mine,” repeated Sarah Rogers, reflectively. 
“But I don’t know that that is any reason 
why we shouldn’t get along together,” she 
added. “I heard Miss Almy say the other 
day that differences in the people we asso- 
ciate with have a developing influence.” 

“Oh, you will — you will ask her!” cried 
Sarah. “I have a chafing dish; oh, you will 
see that I can cook ! Mother and I used 
to, in Paris. And — and really in spite of 
my silly jokes I think” — she paused, her 


SARAH THE LESS 


29 


breath coming quickly — “I think there is 
something of me !” 

The tall Sarah stooped impulsively and put 
her arm about the smaller girl. 

‘T will ask her. I think w^e would be 
good for each other,” she said. “And I 
should have so much better times if I had 
another girl with me.” 

Sarah Rogers had a private interview with 
Miss Almy, which lasted for a long time, 
while Sarah Stuyvesant sat perched upon her 
trunk, which had already been brought down 
into the hall, and waited, her childish face 
growdng wdiite and strained. 

“No girl who was like her, strong and 
good for something, ever took to me, be- 
fore !” she explained to one or two girls who 
knew what was happening in Miss Almy’s 
sanctum. “And it’s such fun to live as she 
does!” she added, with a lighting up of her 
troubled face. 

“Wait until you have to wash the dishes!” 
said Alice Freeling, who was generally known 
as “wet blanket.” But Sarah had washed 
dishes and knew that it was only fun — es- 
pecially when you washed them in company 
with Sarah Rogers. 


30 


SARAH THE LESS 


“It’s queer that those two girls should 
take to each other,” said one of those who 
had stopped to speak to Sarah Stuyvesant, 
sitting upon her trunk. “Sarah Rogers 
couldn’t have found a more unsuitable friend 
in the whole school. I’m curious to see 
what comes of it, if Miss Almy lets her 
stay.” This was Albertina Loomis, who was 
suspected of surreptitiously writing stories 
and having them returned, in bu’ky packages, 
with the result of red-rimmed eyes for the 
day. 

Miss Almy wished, of course, to allow 
Sarah Stuyvesant to remain as a day pupil. 
It would cast an unpleasant reflection upon 
the school to have a pupil expelled. She 
was sure that she could easily persuade her 
uncle to let her stay. But had Sarah 
Rogers duly weighed the responsibility she 
was undertaking? It was an opportunity for 
Sarah Stuyvesant ; the influence would be 
most beneficial. But did Sarah Rogers real- 
ize how wholly lacking in home training, 
how frivolous, how irresponsible, was the 
roommate she had chosen? 

“I like her,” Sarah answered, sturdily. 
“And she can’t lead me into mischief; Lve 


SARAH THE LESS 


31 


got SO much to do ! And I can keep her 
out of it, perhaps, as well as any one. At 
any rate, Fm willing to take the risk.” 

So it came to pass that Sarah Stuyvesant’s 
trunk was carried to the dingy old house 
where Sarah Rogers lived, 15 Jayne Street, 
Highbury, instead of to the railroad station. 

A widow and her daughter lived in the 
old house, with a young nephew, named Jeff, 
who brought the girls coal and wood, al- 
ways enlivening the labor by turning a som- 
ersault at the door and riding, with a rat- 
tling of coal hod, down the stair railing. 

Both the landlady and her daughter were 
deaf, which fact gave Jeff joyous opportuni- 
ties in the matter of war whoops and gen- 
eral liveliness. But the Sarahs had the six- 
teen-year-old’s blessed unconsciousness of 
nerves and rather enjoyed Jeff. 

Sarah Stuyvesant had a bedroom in the 
attic to herself and the living room was 
large, so they were really not badly cramped, 
in their small quarters. 

Orinda herself came over with the second 
installment of provisions, riding in the farm 
wagon with Leander, the hired man. Be- 
sides a liberal supply of vegetables there was 


32 


SARAH THE LESS 


a fowl, somewhat bony, which Orinda held 
up, triumphantly. 

“That old Plymouth Rock rooster had 
such a bad disposition, he was just sufferin’ 
to have his head cut off,” she said. “And 
t’was your uncle himself that said I’d better 
fetch him over to you. You can cook him 
till he’s tender. Your uncle, he asked me 
why I didn’t cook up something for you ! 
He said I ought to carry you a batch of 
pies or doughnuts or something; said he ex- 
pected ’twould hinder you in your studies 
to have to cook so much. When I said I’d 
promised I wouldn’t, he got hoppin’. I 
stuck to it ! I told him I was a likely 
woman and I’d been a professor too long to 
think of breakin’ a promise, and he said he’d 
cook up a mess of victuals, himself! He’d 
see if his own flesh and blood was goin’ to 
be left to starve. He said he warn’t goin’ 
to have you mortified, either, before that 
high-steppin’ little girl that lived with you” — 
at which Sarah Stuyvesant, who was hearing 
all, clapped her hands gleefully, and cried, 
“I told you I would be useful to you ! I 
told you so!” 

“He’s always saying he can cook,” pur- 


SARAH THE LESS 


33 


sued Orinda, “but I don’t believe he can, no 
more’n nothin’ at all. I don’t want no 
kitchen colonels round, myself, and though 
there is men cooks, and folks say they do it 
well. I’m free to confess that I shouldn’t like 
to see a man fryin’ doughnuts. If he sticks 

to it that he is goin’ to cook up for you, 

and I expect nothin’ but what he will, for 

he’s a terrible cont’ry man when he sets out, 

why, you’ll just have to heave out the vict- 
uals and not let him know it. I’m goin’ to 
try to coax him out of it, for it will be a 
dreadful waste. He appears to be more lib- 
eral to you than ever I see him in my life! 
He’s sent you some of the gilliflower apples 
that always goes to market.” 

“Say sweetbreads to him, will you?” said 
Sarah Stuyvesant, eagerly. “I know such a 
chafing-dish recipe for sweetbreads and oys- 
ters ! Oh, I’m so sorry I made Lora Bangs 
sit down on his hat! Does — does he know 
I’m the one?” 

“Well, he said that if Sarah wanted to do 
missionary work, he didn’t know as he had 
any objection, but he calc’lated she would 
have her hands full,” answered Orinda, with 
the candor that was her striking characteristic. 

3 


34 


SARAH THE LESS 


“She hasn’t, so far; she likes me,” said 
Sarah Stuyvesant, simply. “Don’t you have 
sweetbreads? I thought people always had 
them on a farm.” 

A fortnight after. Uncle Abram himself 
came to Jayne Street, bringing the supplies. 
He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, with 
a new tall hat. He was evidently thinking 
more of his niece than he had ever before 
thought; he had said again to Orinda that 
he didn’t mean that she should be mortified 
before “that high-steppin’ gal.” 

It was Saturday — a holiday — and Sarah 
Stuyvesant had coaxed the sterner Sarah into 
consenting to the dish of sweetbreads and 
oysters for luncheon. Uncle Abram came 
in just as they were sitting down and 
brought a large covered basket, which he set 
down with an air of mingled pride and em- 
barrassment. 

“I calc’late there is folks that’s got more 
pride than sense. You got some kind of 
high-flown ideas into Orindy’s head, and 
when she’s set you can’t turn her no more’n 
you could the meetin’house. I had to go 
and cook up some victuals for you, for the 
honor of the family, as you might say. It 


SARAH THE LESS 


35 


come kind of natural, for when I was a 
young man I went as mate aboard of a 
schooner, and when the cook was sick I 
took his place for more’n two months. I 
let Orindy know that there was somebody 
besides her that could cook!” 

Uncle Abram’s rugged face fairly beamed 
with pride. It beamed even upon Sarah 
Stuyvesant, who looked guilty and shame- 
faced, remembering the affair of the hat. 

“You behaving pretty well? Well, I ain’t 
one to lay up anything if you’re good com- 
pany for Sarah,” he said, with even a jovial 
air. 

Sarah Stuyvesant was emboldened to invite 
him to sit down with them and partake of 
her sweetbreads and oysters, while she busied 
herself in taking the eatables from the 
basket. 

“There was a hen that was likely to die 
in debt if she lived any longer,” exclaimed 
Uncle Abram, “so I made her^ into a pie. 
Orindy said that she heard your mother say 
that you set by chicken pie. I don’t know 
as Orindy had her oven just right” — Uncle 
Abram gazed a little anxiously at the pie, 
as Sarah Stuyvesant set it upon the table. 


36 


SARAH THE LESS 


'‘Or, maybe I didn’t fill it full enough; it 
seems to have fell, somehow.” 

Sarah Stuyvesant cut and served the pie. 
The pastry was heavy and soggy ; the fowl 
only half cooked. 

Sarah Rogers withdrew her plate. 

"You — you have to parboil it first, you 
know. Uncle Abram; especially an old hen,” 
she said. 

"That’s the New England way,” said Sarah 
Stuyvesant, quickly. "Our Paris cook only 
baked the chicken.” 

She served herself liberally and ate hero- 
ically. Uncle Abram tried to follow her ex- 
ample, but while nature helped Sarah Stuy- 
vesant, he was obliged to reply upon den- 
tistry, and he failed miserably. 

"I want you to try my dish,” said Sarah 
Stuyvesant, with quick comprehension of his 
difficulties. "I shall feel hurt if you don’t 
save your appetite for that!” 

There was appreciation — gratitude — in the 
swift glance that Uncle Abram cast upon 
her. Surely there were qualities developing 
in Uncle Abram, thought his niece, which 
she had never suspected that he possessed. 
The dainty dish offered no difficulties and 


SARAH THE LESS 


37 


was novel to his palate, accustomed to very 
plain fare. 

Sarah Stuyvesant cast a warning, expres- 
sive glance upon her roommate as she served 
him a second time. That dainty dish had 
not been intended for a farmer’s appetite, 
— and there was none left! 

'T hain’t ate it all up away from you, have 
I?” asked Uncle Abram, looking round him, 
ruefully — he was looking for more I ‘T de- 
clare, ’twas so good I forgot what I was 
doin’.” 

“There’s nothing I like so much as dough- 
nuts and coffee,” said Sarah Stuyvesant, 
promptly. “And these doughnuts are de- 
licious.” The doughnuts had come out of 
Uncle Abram’s basket. 

Even Sarah Rogers’ conscientious candor 
admitted that they were “pretty good.” 

(“I saw to it that the fat wasn’t too hot 
nor too cold, and that’s about all there is 
to doughnuts,” Orinda afterwards explained.) 

Uncle Abram’s face beamed with satisfac- 
tion at Sarah Stuyvesant’s praise. 

“My doughnuts ain’t apt to soak fat,” he 
said, with modest pride. 

He rose to go. Suddenly he resumed his 


38 


SARAH THE LESS 


Stiff manner and said, although with some 
embarrassment, that he hoped they were not 
running into extravagance in the matter of 
eating. He thought that Sarah would bet- 
ter let Orinda cook up for her rather than 
to spend her money on sweetbreads and 
oysters. 

“The old curmudgeon ! — when he ate them 
all!” murmured Sarah Stuyvesant, disrespect- 
fully, as the door closed upon Uncle Abram 
and upon his niece, who thought it polite 
to accompany him to the street door. 

Before the words were out of Sarah Stuy- 
vesant’s mouth the door opened again, and 
Uncle Abram’s grim face looked in. 

“What I meant was that you needn’t buy 
any more of those sweetbreads,” he said, in 
a gruff tone. “I can get ’em full cheaper 
at the market for you.” 

Sarah Stuyvesant clapped her hands softly 
as the door closed again. 

“There’s an undeveloped side to Uncle 
Abram,” she said to herself. 

Sarah Rogers returned with a great paste- 
board box under her arm. Uncle Abram 
had left it in the hall, having his basket of 
eatables in his hand and on his mind. 


SARAH THE LESS 


39 


“It is Polly Pendexter’s wedding dress,” 
she said, breathless with haste and eagerness. 
“Mother wrote me about it. She wants me 
to trim the bodice and loop the lace flounce 
on the skirt. I can do those things better 
than she can. It’s real point lace — think of 
that ! and belonged to Polly’s grandmother. 
Mr. Pendexter was born in Gilboa, and he 
and Polly come there every summer. They 
have a beautiful house ; he owns railroads 
and mines and such things. It was good of 
Polly to let mother do it. She said long 
ago, that mother should make her wedding 
dress. And mother is going to the city with 
it to make any alterations that it may need. 
She has Polly’s measure and has made her 
many a gown, but, of course, this must be 
perfection. It will be such a delightful trip 
for mother !” 

Sarah Rogers chattered on, carried out of 
her serene self by her delight. 

“You must stand off while I open the 
box ! Pm almost afraid to look at it, it’s 
so valuable!” she cried. 

Sarah Stuyvesant had come very near, in- 
deed, and her face was flushed with eager- 
ness. As she frankly admitted, if there was 


40 


SARAH THE LESS 


anything she loved it was a pretty gown. 
She went into ecstasies of admiration over 
the ivory silk and frosty lace; she said she 
had seen nothing like it since she left Paris. 
She insisted upon doing all the housework 
while Sarah Rogers devoted the rest of the 
holiday to trimming the dress. She even 
self-forgetfully ate baked beans for supper, 
the only one of Sarah Rogers’ humble viands 
which she scorned and detested. 

Sarah Rogers worked away all the even- 
ing, while her roommate sat at her feet and 
gazed and suggested. 

“I must finish it to-night,” Sarah said. 
“Mother will not go until Tuesday and will 
come here for it on her way, but Mrs. Sib- 
ley asked me to stay with them all night, 
Monday. You know I go to give Margaret 
Sibley her lesson that afternoon, and a pro- 
fessor of mathematics, whom she wished me 
to meet, is to be there in the evening.” 

Already Sarah Rogers was tutoring one of 
the youngest seminary girls, in algebra. The 
Gilboa school was given to mathematics, like 
most country schools, and Sarah had “a head 
for figures.” 

“I knew a professor of mathematics, once,” 


SARAH THE LESS 


41 


said Sarah Stuyvesant, ‘'and he was very 
nice. He went over on the steamer with 
mother and me, and afterwards used to come 
to see us in Paris. But he didn’t take to 
me as he will to you. I am only going to 
Grace Albee’s party Monday evening. That 
suits me better than mathematical professors. 
It is no wonder that the girls call you Sarah 
the Greater and me Sarah the Less !” 

“Why, that’s only because I’m so big and 
you’re so little, you goosie !” said Sarah 
Rogers, lightly. 

“It means more than that. You know it 
does — and I know it does — and it’s just,” 
said Sarah Stuyvesant, with conviction. “But 
I am quite content to go to Grace Albee’s 
party, and I shouldn’t care a bit for the 
mathematical professor. I only wish I had 
a decent gown to wear ! Grace Albee is 
about the only one of the Highbury girls 
who is really stylish and knows stylish 
people.” Sarah the Less had resumed her 
ordinary light tone, and her mind had 
wholly returned to gowns. She touched 
the lace flounce with caressing finger 
tips. “Mother has some point lace — a 
fichu ; it’s a relic of ‘ould dacency,’ as an 


42 


SARAH THE LESS 


Irish maid of ours used to say. It’s the 
apple of her eye. She will never let me 
wear it.” And she heaved a long, long sigh. 

‘'Do you really care so much to wear 
point lace?” asked the other Sarah, wonder- 
ingly. “I like pretty clothes, but I never 
think of caring for a costly thing like that. 
But, of course, life has been different to you. 
If mother and I were sure of new winter 
jackets, since mine is outgrown and hers 
is shabby, and a new overcoat for Absalom, 
I should be quite satisfied without point 
lace !” 

It occurred to Sarah Rogers to be glad 
that this was so, Sarah Stuyvesant’s pretty 
delicate-featured face was so marred by dis- 
content and longing. 

“I should like to see myself in it just 
once,” said Sarah, wistfully. 

But Sarah Rogers did not offer to allow 
her to try on Polly Pendexter’s wedding 
gown. It would not have seemed to her 
quite an honorable thing to do. 

Sarah the Less felt that some of Sarah 
the Greater’s ideas were quite too severe. 

Monday afternoon, when Sarah Rogers 
had gone to give Margaret Sibley her alge- 


SARAH THE LESS 


43 


bra lesson and to spend the night at her 
pupil’s home, Sarah the Less took the wed- 
ding gown out of the box in which her 
roommate had carefully folded it. 

In her opinion it would not harm Polly 
Pendexter’s wedding gown in the least for 
her to try it on. 

The prospective bride was small; the dress 
fitted Sarah astonishingly well, quite as if it 
had been made for her, indeed. She would 
have liked more of a train for a wedding 
gown ; this was only long for an ordinary 
party gown. There had not been enough of 
the point lace flounce — the heirloom ! — that 
was the reason, thought Sarah, that the dress 
had so short a train. Only like an ordinary 
party gown ! simple and girlish and oh, how 
becoming. Sarah gazed at herself admiringly 
in every mirror that the small establishment 
afforded. 

Only a^ party gown, — and with the pink 
roses which she had ordered at the florist’s 
to brighten up her shabby old green silk 
it would not look too much like a wedding 
gown ! The temptation came in a flash, and 
then it was only a question — as it always is 
in such a case — of how much Sarah Stuyve- 


44 


SARAH THE LESS 


sant had been in the habit of resisting temp- 
tations. 

When she ran up the street to Pauline 
Dennett’s house — it was Pauline’s mother 
who was to chaperon her to the dance — 
she wore a white silk dress with a point lace 
flounce carefully tucked up under her long 
cloak. 

None of the girls in Grace Albee’s set 
were friends of Sarah the Greater; very few 
of them were seminary girls. No mention 
of dresses worn at the party was at all likely 
to reach Sarah Rogers’ ears. She meant to 
be careful of it — oh, so careful ! Why should 
not one have the pleasure of wearing such 
a gown as that when it would harm nobody? 
The girls at Grace Albee’s would not be 
greatly surprised at her elegance, for they 
knew that all her gowns were sent to her 
from Paris. 

Sarah the Greater would think it was a 
dreadful thing, — but then she would never 
know it! She would be quite incapable of 
doing such a thing, — but then she would 
never be tempted! She was quite right in 
saying that life had been very different for 
her. She had had the simple, rigid, rural New 


SARAH THE LESS 


45 


England training. Severest principle, even in 
trifles, seemed to be as the breath of her 
nostrils. Now, in Paris they had been full 
of makeshifts, continually, to get along. 
They took what sunshine they could get 
without counting the cost — to any one. 
Not to any one! There was a faint, vague 
pang in that thought to Sarah Stuyvesant as 
she ran on up the street. 

She was glad that it would not do any 
harm to Polly Pendexter not to have the 
first wearing of her wedding gown, since 
she would never know it. 


CHAPTER III 


S ARAH ROGERS returned from Mrs. 
Sibley’s, Tuesday morning, having ob- 
tained leave of absence from her morn- 
ing lessons that she might see her mother 
when she came to Jayne street for Polly 
Pendexter’s wedding dress. 

She arrived early, expecting her mother 
to come before eight o’clock that she might 
leave Plighbury by the first train. She found 
Sarah Stuyvesant, trying, faint-heartedly, to 
get breakfast. Sarah the Less came but in 
great force for a chafing-dish supper, es- 
pecially when one or two girls had been in- 
vited to share it, or for a Saturday luncheon 
when there was a dainty dish, but she never 
had any enthusiasm about getting breakfast. 
So at first Sarah Rogers scarcely observed 
that she looked pale and dejected. 

Instead of poaching eggs in the chafing 
dish, as Sarah Rogers expected she would 
do, she was frugally and severely warming 
over the baked beans, as even Sarah Rogers 
would not have done on a Tuesday morning. 

46 



4 I 


» » 


POLLY PENDEXTER 


GAVE WAY TO HER GRIEF 


PAGE 58 



SARAH THE LESS 


47 


She had essayed a johnnycake, and it was 
soggy and thin. When she took it out of 
the oven she burst into tears. 

“A johnnycake isn’t worth tears,” said 
Sarah Rogers, wonderingly. “It takes a 
knack, and you haven’t acquired it yet.” 

Sarah Stuyvesant sat down at the table 
and let her coffee grow cold while she . gazed 
steadfastly at her roommate. 

As for Sarah Rogers, she had but little 
thought to give to Sarah the Less and her 
dejection, so occupied was her mind with 
Polly Pendexter’s wedding dress. She was 
hoping that her mother would think her 
trimming very pretty and as effective as she 
thought it. She hoped that the dress would 
be noticed by the Pendexters’ friends, many 
of whom were summer visitors at Gilboa ; 
that would naturally lead to a patronage that 
would be much more profitable and encour- 
aging to her mother than any that she had 
ever had — the dear mother who had worked 
so hard and whose labors she so longed to 
lighten ! 

That dress might mean so much to them ! 
As she absently ate the soggy johnnycake 
she wondered whether Polly PendextePs wed- 


48 


SARAH THE LESS 


ding dress were so important, even to her- 
self, as it was to her and to her mother. 

“How happy you are ! how happy you 
are !” cried Sarah Stuyvesant, suddenly, with 
a great, strangling sob in her throat. 

Sarah Rogers dropped the fork upon her 
warmed-over baked beans. 

“Something is the matter!” she said. “I 
haven’t been sympathetic a bit ! my mind is 
so full of mother’s affairs ; I am so pleased 
about Polly Pendexter’s wedding dress. But 
you didn’t have a good time last night.” 

“A good time ! I had a dreadful time I” 
wailed Sarah Stuyvesant. “The most per- 
fectly dreadful time that I have ever had in 
my life. I — I spoiled my dress! A boy — a 
young elephant who was running around — 
stepped on the train and tore it frightfully, 
and then a waiter spilled ice cream all over 
the front breadth.” 

“Oh, what a pity — that pretty green silk!” 
said Sarah Rogers, with deep feeling. 

“Sarah Rogers, it wasn’t the green silk !” 
Sarah the Less had risen from her seat and 
her voice was shrill with excitement. “Can’t 
you understand? Oh, I wish I had run 
away, only I couldn’t be quite such a cow- 


SARAH THE LESS 


49 


ard ! There must be something that I can 
do about it! oh, there must be something!” 

Sarah Rogers rose, also, and her face 
turned white. She was of quick percep- 
tion, and she was acquainted with Sarah 
Stuyvesant. The possible truth flashed upon 
her in an instant. Yet her voice was incredulous. 
We are always incredulous of misfortune at the 
first shock. And this was one of the things that, 
to Sarah Rogers’ mind, seemed too bad to 
be true. 

“You — you didn’t” — her voice shook and 
broke. 

“I wore the wedding dress! — it is Polly 
Pendexter’s wedding dress that is ruined !” 
cried Sarah Stuyvesant, desperately. 

It was at that moment that the door 
opened and Mrs. Rogers came in. Her 
matronly face was so flushed and eager as to 
hide all its lines of care. A journey was 
an unusual event, and this was so pleasant 
and important a journey! 

She uttered an exclamation at the sight of 
the two distracted young faces. 

“O Mrs. Rogers, what shall I do? She 
is so good and so hard ! Are good people 
always so hard? I did a dreadful thing, and 


4 


50 


SARAH THE LESS 


Sarah will never forgive me — never!” Sarah 
Stuyvesant had turned to Mrs. Rogers and 
held out appealing hands, like a child. 

‘'You don’t realize what it is to us! you 
are thinking only of yourself!” said Sarah 
Rogers. “What does it matter whether I 
forgive you or not? I must think what we 
are to do. Mother, she wore Polly Pendex- 
ter’s dress to a party, and ruined it!” 

Mrs. Rogers leaned upon the table for 
support, and looked, in incredulous dismay, 
from one to the other of the girls. 

“I was away and she took it out of the 
closet and wore it!” said Sarah Rogers. She 
spoke quietly, but her voice was strained 
and hard. 

“I — I will ask Uncle Harold for money to 
pay for it ! Mother can’t give it to me. 
Oh, if Uncle Harold won’t give it to me, 
I will do something !” cried Sarah Stuyvesant, 
frantically. 

“The wedding is the day after to-morrow,” 
said Mrs. Rogers, in a dull, despairing tone. 
“If I had the money I couldn’t replace the 
dress; — that priceless lace and the imported 
silk! Yet, of course, it must be paid for — it 
must be paid for!” 


SARAH THE LESS 


51 


“Yes, it must be paid for,” said Sarah 
Rogers. 

Both she and her mother ignored the 
other Sarah, who crouched in a corner wdth 
her arms locked round her knees, sobbing 
and wailing, “Oh, what shall I do? what 
shall I do?” 

There was a shade of annoyance and con- 
tempt in Sarah Rogers’ face which meant 
that she was vaguely conscious of the dis- 
turbing noise. To the two reticent New 
England women such a manifestation of feel- 
ing would have been impossible. Perhaps 
it would have been too much to expect 
them at once to feel pity for the girl whose 
selfish vanity had cost them so much. 

“Let me see the dress,” said Mrs. Rogers, 
at length. Sarah Rogers went to the closet, 
with a doubtful glance at the other Sarah, 
who still hugged her knees and wailed. 

She found the dress and brought it out, 
with its torn and draggled lace flounce and 
its hopelessly-stained front breadth. 

“More than a yard of the flounce is 
ruined,” said Mrs. Rogers, examining the 
dress, critically; “and there was scarcely 
enough for a modern dress, anyway ! It can 


52 


SARAH THE LESS 


never be worn. The whole front breadth 
of the dress is stained, and that ivory silk 
probably can’t be matched, except in Lon- 
don, where it was bought. There isn’t a 
color that is so hard to match as an ivory 
white.” 

She spoke dispassionately, but her voice 
shook. 

“You just put it into the box, Sarah,” 
she continued, calmly, “and I’ll carry it to 
the Pendexters’.” 

“It’s too hard for you, mother, it’s too 
hard !” cried Sarah. “Let me go ! O 
mother, don’ t look so ! They can get an- 
other dress. It will only delay the wedding 
a little. They can get another, and in time 
we can pay for this one. Don’t look so !” 
For Mrs. Rogers’ face had turned very 
white, and she staggered as she attempted to 
stand. 

“I’m a little run down ; that’s all,” she 
said. “I worked hard to get the dress done 
in time, and then I hurried to get ready to 
go. I’m sure that’s all.” 

But she was weak and faint, and did not 
rally readily when they got her upon the 
lounge. 


SARAH THE LESS 


53 


“You’ll have to let me go, mother; it’s the 
only way,” said Sarah. “The sooner I go, 
the better.” She proceeded to get ready 
even as she spoke. It was a hard thing 
to do, but it must be done. There was a 
heroic satisfaction, too, in the thought that 
she should save her mother from the hard 
ordeal. 

Her heart burned with anger against the 
girl who had brought this trouble upon 
them. Her first, foolish prank had shown 
her that she was irresponsible; why had she 
not realized that she was unprincipled as 
well? Now, not only was the better-paying 
class of patrons which her mother had 
hoped to gain by that dress, an impossibility, 
but she and her mother were handicapped 
by what to them was a heavy debt. 

And Polly Pendexter ! It was no small 
thing for a girl to have her wedding dress 
ruined on the very eve of the wedding! 
She was sorely troubled for Polly Pendexter, 
who had trusted them. 

Mrs. Rogers had tried to rise to her feet, 
but found herself too faint and ill. 

“I feel as if I must go,” she said. “There 
might be something that I could do about 


54 


SARAH THE LESS 


getting another dress. Yet I don’t know as 
they would want me to have anything to 
do with it. We can’t expect that they’ll not 
be angry about it. Anyway, it’s too hard 
for you to go.” 

‘Tm the one who ought to go. I am 
the one who has brought the trouble upon 
us,” said Sarah. 

“Oh, dear, oh, dear !” wailed the other 
Sarah, toward whom neither mother nor 
daughter had vouchsafed a glance. 

“I can only say that we will pay,” con- 
tinued Sarah, and she spoke as if her lips 
were stiff, — “that, somehow, so far as money 
can, we will pay.” 

“Yes, that’s all you can say,” assented her 
mother. “I suppose that the money value 
is as much as a hundred and fifty dollars.” 

“More than that, probably,” said Sarah, 
wearily. 

They had no thought, in this conversation, 
of bringing her guilt home to the reckless 
Sarah, but only of facing the future for 
themselves. They simply left her out of the 
question, as one from whom nothing was 
to be expected. 

She had gradually grown quiet, and, rising 


SARAH THE LESS 


55 


from her corner, stood gazing at them, won- 
deringly. Only once had she spoken, sud- 
denly intercepting Sarah Rogers as she went 
to and fro between that room and the inner 
one, hurriedly dressing herself. 

“Why don’t you reproach me?” she had 
cried. “Why don’t you say everything that 
is dreadful to me? Oh, I wish you would! 
It would be so much better than this I” 

“What would be the use?” Sarah Rogers 
returned, coldly. 

“I must get home as soon as I can, 
Sarah,” said Mrs. Rogers, suddenly sitting 
upright. “I don’t want to frighten you, but 
I am a little afraid that I am going to 
be sick.” 

“I must go with you,” cried Sarah, look- 
ing with sudden alarm at her mother’s white 
face. “I can’t let you go alone, whatever 
happens! And I must get some one there 
to take care of you. You always feel things 
so deeply, mother ! I am afraid that this 
will make you really ill. I must send for 
Cousin Martha Appleby to come and take 
care of you.” 

“You must go on to the Pendexters’ just 
as fast as possible. You mustn’t even take 


56 


SARAH THE LESS 


time to go to the stage with me/’ said Mrs. 
Rogers, anxiously. 

“Couldn’t — couldn’t I go to the stage with 
her? Couldn’t I go home with her?” asked 
the other Sarah. She spoke hesitatingly, 
and the color came and went on her face, 
which seemed to have grown small and 
pinched. Sarah Rogers suddenly checked 
the indignant refusal that rose to her lips. 
This girl who had made all the trouble 
might as well be of some use ! Perhaps, 
too, there stirred within her, half uncon- 
sciously, some pity at the sight of the 
pinched whiteness of the small face. 

“Perhaps you’d better, if — if mother” — she 
said. 

“You can go to the stage with me if 
you’ve a mind to,” said Mrs. Rogers, not un- 
kindly. “I guess I shall feel able to go 
the rest of the way alone.” 

On her way to the railroad station, Sarah 
telegraphed to Cousin Martha Appleby to 
come and stay with her mother until she 
should be better. 

She carried with her the great box that 
contained the ruined dress, and she went on 
with the steadfast determination with which 


SARAH THE LESS 


57 


she felt one must face the hard things of 
life that had to be done. It did not even 
occur to her to run away, as it had occurred to 
Sarah the Less to do, or even to adopt such a 
makeshift as to send the box with an apology. 

She had been only once or twice in her 
life to the city, and had looked forward to 
a journey there as one of the great pleasures 
sometime to come her way. But there was 
no pleasure in this journey. It was long, 
long, and yet she dreaded the end. 

It seemed almost as if years had passed, 
aging years, although it was only a little 
past noon, when she sat in the luxurious city 
reception room waiting for Mrs. Pendexter. 
She had tried to think how many care- 
encumbered people she had passed upon the way, 
how many with heavy, lifelong sorrows. 
Her own trouble, she told herself, was but 
small and sordid. But it would not lighten, 
for all her philosophy. That dress had 
meant so much to her mother and to her, 
and it was so bitterly humiliating to have 
failed to fulfill so small a trust. 

A message came to her. If Miss Rogers 
had the wedding dress with her would she 
please send it up by the servant. 


SARAH THE LESS 


58 


Miss Rogers could not. She said so with 
stiff lips, to the astonished butler, who would 
have seized the box. She must ask that 
Mrs. Pendexter would allow her to show the 
dress, herself. 

Then would Miss Rogers come upstairs 
with the dress? The butler permitted him- 
self an impatience of tone as if he were 
echoing his mistress. 

Sarah, whose limbs trembled as she walked 
upstairs, found Mrs. Pendexter and Polly and 
a smart lady's maid in a little boudoir which 
was the nest of Polly's dainty girlhood. 

Mrs. Pendexter and Polly greeted her with 
neighborly kindness, as they always did, al- 
though in truth they had felt some hesitation 
in intrusting that gown to a Gilboa modiste, 
and had only yielded to the urgent desire 
of Mr. Pendexter to patronize Gilboa in- 
dustry. 

Sarah told the story, simply, almost coldly, 
in fact, and as if she did not care, the result 
of the rigid self-restraint that she felt to be 
necessary. “To cry" before people, she 
would have felt to be an overwhelming dis- 
grace. Polly Pendexter had no such 

scruples. She gave way to her grief in an 


SARAH THE LESS 


59 


entirely unrestrained fashion, and had no hesi- 
tation in saying that she thought it was 
perfectly abominable carelessness to allow 
such a thing to happen. Then Mrs. Pen- 
dexter and Polly quite ignored her, in de- 
ciding what they should do to repair what 
Mrs. Pendexter called the dreadful disaster. 
They ignored her as she and her mother had 
ignored Sarah Stuyvesant, Sarah vaguely re- 
membered. She had not realized what a 
severe punishment it could be, to be ignored. 

Sarah managed to get a sufficient hearing 
to say that they meant to pay for the dress 
so far as money could pay. 

“Pay for it, child!” cried Mrs. Pendexter, 
impatiently, but not altogether unkindly. 
“That flounce alone is worth three hundred 
dollars.” 

“VVe shall pay the money in time,” said 
Sarah, and she said it with determination, 
although her lip trembled. 

The white misery in her face caught for 
a moment Mrs. Pendexter’s abstracted gaze. 
Her manner became half-carelessly kind, and 
she invited Sarah to stay and have some 
luncheon. Of course Sarah felt bad ! She 
ought to, Polly said in answer to a remark 


6o 


SARAH THE LESS 


of her mother’s after Sarah had gone. She 
added that she wished they had never lis- 
tened to her father, or that she had never 
been so silly when she was a little girl as 
to tell Mrs. Rogers that she should make 
her wedding dress. 

Before Sarah reached the railroad station 
her energetic mind had begun to try to 
form plans to earn the money to pay for the 
dress. The debt was likely to cramp and 
cripple them for years. She must allow as 
little as possible of the trouble to come upon 
her mother, since it was to her carelessness 
that it was all due. Had not Miss Almy, 
had not even the schoolgirls, warned her of 
Sarah Stuyvesant’s recklessness and irrespon- 
sibility ? And in spite of all she had taken 
her for a roommate ! 

Sarah Stuyvesant had said that she would 
pay. Of course, that did not mean any- 
thing. She had always very little money. 
She would rather buy herself a point lace 
flounce with it, than to pay for that one. 
So Sarah said to herself, with a curling lip. 

She must get rid of that girl. She wished 
that she might never see or think of her 
again. When she reached her rooms she 


SARAH THE LESS 


6l 


found a telegram awaiting her, from Cousin 
Martha Appleby. Her brother was ill with 
rheumatic fever, so she could not come to 
stay^ with Sarah’s mother. 

After all, perhaps her mother was not go- 
ing to be ill, thought Sarah, trying to be 
hopeful. 

It was almost impossible to obtain a nurse 
in Gilboa, and too expensive to hire one 
from Highbury or elsewhere. Sarah said to 
herself that she should be obliged to go 
home, and that would mean abandoning her 
plan of coaching three of the Seminary girls 
in mathematics. In that sort of teaching lay 
her chief hope of paying for Polly Pendex- 
ter’s ruined dress. 

What had become of Sarah Stuyvesant? 
This came as an afterthought to Sarah Rog- 
ers when she read her telegram. She had 
probably gone to play tennis with some of 
the Grace Albee set. She was quite light- 
minded enough to go and enjoy the game in 
spite of her frantic demonstrations of grief 
only that morning. 

It could not be possible that she had gone 
home with her mother and had stayed, was 
going to stay all night! — for it was now late 


62 


SARAH THE LESS 


in the evening. Sarah said to herself that 
the girl was in a sufficiently theatrical frame 
of mind to do such a thing, but she hoped 
that her mother had not allowed it. 

Sarah the Less had shown heroism in the 
matter of washing dishes and even of eating 
warmed-over baked beans, but as a sick- 

nurse, with the household duties also thrown 
upon her — and Absalom, every inch a boy — 
Sarah Rogers doubted whether she would be 
equal to the emergency for even a day. If 
there had been a conveyance she would have 
instantly set out for home, but she was 
obliged to wait for the stage’s first trip in 

the morning, which was not until nearly 
noon. 

The next day as she walked up the hill 

from the corner where the stage left her, she 
saw the doctor’s carriage turning out of the 
lane. She stopped him, her heart beating 

fast with fear. 

“Your mother is threatened with a fever,” 
he said. “She has been running down for a 
good while. I hope to be able to break it 
up. You have a plucky little piece there for 
a nurse. Knows what she is about. I don’t 
think it will be necessary for you to stay 


SARAH THE LESS 


63 


at home. I told her I would send Phoebe 
Nute over from the poorhouse for the rough 
work — an hour or two a day Phoebe is good 
for — and that girl makes Absalom toe the 
mark ! She evidently isn’t much used to 
work, but there is undeveloped power there, 
mark my words.” 

When the doctor had gone on, after some 
further explanation of her mother’s symp- 
toms, Sarah’s mind instantly returned to his 
extraordinary estimate of Sarah Stuyvesant. 

“Undeveloped power!” she repeated, scorn- 
fully. “A power to play ruinous pranks. I 
must stay at home even if it means giving 
up everything. Fancy trusting mother to her 
care ! and she shall go back as soon as the 
stage goes.” 

As she entered the lane, she saw Sarah the 
Less, with sleeves rolled up, hanging out 
clothes upon the line. Absalom, evidently 
under her orders, was carrying the great 
clothes basket about for her. And Absalom 
was the kind of boy that never likes to 
help about what he thinks is properly 
women’s work. 

He had not liked Sarah Stuyvesant, either, 
when he had first seen her. “You only like 


64 


SARAH THE LESS 


her because she has* a turned-up nose to 
match your freckles,” he had said to his sis- 
ter. Absalom, besides being every inch a 
boy, was not always a pleasing boy. 

But he was helping now, cheerfully. He 
was even grinning broadly, as if at some joke. 
“She wouldn’t realize it if mother were very 
ill. She would go off to a party ! She 
must go back when the stage goes,” said 
Sarah Rogers to herself. 




“it was just the sort of thing that page 77. 

SHE DIDN’T wish ABSALOM TO DO.” 



CHAPTER IV 


1 WISH, oh, I wish you would let me 
stay!” Sarah Stuyvesant clasped 
Sarah Rogers’ hand, beseechingly, and 
looked up at her through a mist of tears. 
Sarah Rogers thought this a theatrical way 
and did not like it. 

“You don’t like me and you don’t trust 
me, and it’s no wonder!” continued the tear- 
ful Sarah. “But the doctor does, and your 
mother does, and it will make me feel that 
I am doing something to make up for the 
dreadful mischief I did. I am going to pay. 
I shan’t have a minute’s peace until I pay. 
But now I want to make it possible for you 
to stay at school. I know — I know, Sarah 
Rogers, how you feel about leaving, and 
losing the chance to coach those girls! You 
feel as if it were the end of everything for 
you ! and yet you can’t trust your mother 
to me ! Sarah Rogers, you can trust your 
mother to me ! I have been waked up. It 
was doing that dreadful thing and seeing 
what it brought upon you. I am going to 
5 65 


66 


SARAH THE LESS 


make amends for it! You have no right to 
refuse to give me a chance to make amends 
for it!” 

Sarah Stuyvesant’s voice was shrill with 
emotion. She ended in a burst of passionate 
tears. Sarah Rogers stooped and put her 
arm round the slender, trembling figure, 
though her manner was constrained. She 
instinctively distrusted this tempestuous tem- 
perament. “I know you feel just as you say 
you do,” she said — and even Sarah the 
Greater was somewhat carried out of herself, 
or she could not have been so frank. “You 
feel so now; but when it comes to doing the 
hard, self-denying thing right straight along, 
it — it isn’t so easy!” 

The lip of the stronger Sarah was trem- 
bling. She felt, suddenly, how hard her own 
lot had been compared with this girl’s whose 
mind was so light that she could be mean 
and reckless for the love of wearing a 
thread-lace flounce. 

“You think I don’t know that. You think 
I don’t see how different your life has been 
from mine and that it was dreadful — dread- 
ful ! for me to bring such trouble upon you. 
It’s because I do see it that I am deter- 


SARAH THE LESS 


67 


mined to atone for it. Oh, there is more 

of me than you think! I am not the same 

girl who made Lora Bangs sit down on your 
uncle’s hat. That was a silly child ! The 
look you gave me cured me of all that ! 

There was pity and there was contempt ' in 

it. You don’t pity me so much, now. You 
had almost to try even to put your arm round 
me. It is no wonder! You will not believe 
that I’m not the same girl that wore Polly 
Pendexter’s wedding dress to a party. But 
only give me a chance to prove it, — only 
give me a chance !” She clung to Sarah 
Rogers in her eagerness, and would not let 
her go. 

‘T always knew there was something of 
me !” She added this clause with a sudden, 
half-mournful, half-defiant smile, and some- 
thing like a spark in her misty eyes. Sarah 
Rogers smiled, too. It relieved the strained 
situation which jarred upon her reticent 
habit. It also made her share, suddenly, 
something of Sarah Stuyvesant’s belief. If 
there were not something of Sarah, she 
would not wish to atone for the mischief that 
she had done. 

“If — if you really think you can take care 


68 


SARAH THE LESS 


of mother and do the work with only Phoebe 
Nute from the poorhouse to help — and if it 
should be only a slow fever, as the doctor 
thinks, and if mother is willing” — 

“She will be; she likes me!” interpolated 
Sarah Stuyvesant, triumphantly. 

“I am willing that you should try. I am 
sure you’ll not want to try it long. And 
you ought not to leave school. What will 
your mother say?” 

“No one cares what I do if I keep out 
of too great mischief,” said Sarah, calmly. 
“I’m going to be a coach when I go back. 
Think how I have thrown away my French 
accent ! > It’s not only in the school that I 
can get pupils. I can form classes. There 
is not a native teacher in Highbury. I lived 
in Paris so long that I am like a native. 
Oh, I am going to earn money — three hun- 
dred and fifty dollars, soon; you will see ! I 
will prevent you from losing your chance, 
too. I will take care of your mother, first, 
because they will wait for the money until 
I can earn it. I will ask Mrs. Pendexter to wait.” 

“You will ask Mrs. Pendexter to wait! 
You cannot relieve my mother and me of 
the responsibility,” said Sarah Rogers. 


SARAH THE LESS 


69 


'‘You must tell her, then, that I am to 
blame and will pay. Your mother has wor- 
ried ; she talked to herself in the night, — 
when she didn’t know that I heard — about 
the loss of Mrs. Pendexter’s patronage and 
friendliness. It cut me to the heart! Sarah, 
didn’t you tell them how it happened?” 
Sarah Stuyvesant’s breath came quickly in 
her anxiety. 

“I don’t think that Mrs. Pendexter lis- 
tened, or Polly. I think they got the im- 
pression that I had worn the dress,” said 
Sarah Rogers, slowly. “It doesn’t make any 
difference. They wouldn’t care. The dress 
was ruined, and mother and I were re- 
sponsible.” 

“It must be paid for soon — soon !” said 
Sarah Stuyvesant, with feverish eagerness. 
Sarah Rogers went into the house, slowly, 
and toward her mother’s door. 

“I will ask mother if you may stay,” she 
said. After she had closed the door behind 
her, she reopened it to say: “I am glad, Sarah, 
that you wish to write to Mrs. Pendexter.” 

When the door had closed again, the les- 
ser Sarah stood still, with clasped hands and 
shining eyes. 


70 


SARAH THE LESS 


“She’s beginning! — she’s beginning to be- 
lieve in me!” she said aloud, exultantly. 

Sarah Rogers had a long conference with 
her mother and with the doctor. The result 
was that Sarah Stuyvesant was installed as 
nurse and housekeeper, with Phcebe Nute, 
somewhat feeble of mind, but strong of body, 
to help with the rougher parts of the house- 
work. 

Absalom, who was accounted somewhat 
“queer” and difficult, was sworn to helpful- 
ness and good behavior. This was the more 
easily accomplished because Absalom “took 
to” the nurse and housekeeper, declaring his 
conviction that she was “considerable of a 
girl” — which was great praise for Absalom. 

Mrs. Rogers’ illness was a slow fever; it 
was not at all dangerous, but it might have 
a long run. Sarah Rogers went back to 15 
Jayne Street alone and resumed the queer 
little housekeeping that now seemed dreary 
and strange. 

She threw herself with resolute determina- 
tion into her school work and into the effort 
to secure pupils. Besides the three Sem- 
inary girls who needed coaching she found 
several younger scholars in public and private 


SARAH THE LESS 


71 


schools who were dull in arithmetic and 
whose parents were glad to pay to have 
them helped along. But, at the best, there 
was not much to earn, and her mother’s en- 
ergetic hands were now idle. Three hun- 
dred and fifty dollars was a great deal of 
money ! If the flounce was worth three 
hundred they could not pay less than that 
for the dress. Even Sarah Rogers’ stout heart 
was often faint, in those days, and not seldom a 
little bitter toward Sarah the Less. Debt 
seemed an intolerable thing to Sarah Rogers. 

Her mother’s illness ran its slow course, 
and there were only encouraging reports 
from home. Sarah could not go home every 
Saturday, because she had as a pupil a boy 
in a broker’s office who had only evenings 
at his disposal and was anxious to have a 
lesson every evening. 

One Saturday night, when she went unex- 
pectedly, she found Sarah presiding at the 
supper table over burnt baked beans and 
brown bread that would ‘‘stay dough,” as its 
maker pathetically said. And there were 
very red rims round Sarah Stuyvesant’s eyes. 
But for the invalid there was the daintiest 
of toast and custard. 


72 


SARAH THE LESS 


“She can make the best goodies you ever 
tasted, and common things don’t count !” de- 
clared Absalom, evidently sharing the opinion 
of the French queen who saw no reason why 
the people should not eat cake if they could 
not get bread. 

Mrs. Rogers had only praises for her 
nurse, and the house was daintily neat, even 
to the greater Sarah’s critical inspection. 

“Sarah Stuyvesant, you are having a hard 
time !” said Sarah Rogers, looking stead- 
fastly, almost sympathetically, into the house- 
keeper’s eyes. 

“I haven’t repented — not for a moment, 
and I shan’t — if you think they are getting 
along,” said Sarah the Less, stoutly. 

Sarah Rogers returned to Highbury with 
a greater belief in Sarah Stuyvesant’s staying 
power, and with less misgiving than she had 
felt before. Sarah Stuyvesant accepted the 
amendment that Phoebe Nute should remain 
to bake the beans and steam the brown bread. 

It was two weeks after, that Uncle Abram 
came, himself, with a stock of provisions to 
Jayne Street. Sarah had made concessions 
in view of Uncle Abram’s persistence in the 
severe and only occasional labor of cookery. 


SARAH THE LESS 


73 


and Orinda now sent a contribution from her 
Saturday’s baking to Uncle Abram’s evident 
relief and gratification. “Cream pies ain’t so 
dreadful expensive on a farm, and Orindy, 
she does set by making you one,” he said, 
as he carefully lifted a snowy mountain from 
its protecting covers in his basket. “You 
don’t appear to have sweetbreads and oys- 
ters, now the little gal is away,” he added, 
casting a somewhat disappointed glance at 
Sarah’s boiled eggs and cold johnnycake. 
“Beats all how well she’s turned out!” he 
continued, heartily. “Appeared to me that 
you was kind of crazy to take her for a 
roommate after she behaved so foolish and 
reckless, making that gal sit down on my 
hat. But there ! I’ll own your father had a 
way of seeing through folks quicker’n what I 
could, and I guess you take after him. 
Your mother couldn’t have had a better 
nurse, and I don’t expect she’ll charge you 
no great for it.” 

His niece shook her head, slightly, non- 
committally. She had persuaded her mother 
not to tell Uncle Abram of the trouble Sarah 
Stuyvesant had brought upon them. She 
dreaded to hear his reflections upon her folly 


74 


SARAH THE LESS 


in choosing the reckless Sarah for a room- 
mate, and she dreaded still more to have 
him know how hampered she was with debt, 
in the very beginning of her struggle. 

“She keeps ’em kind of lively there, too. 
I declare, I like to go in and listen to her 
and Absalom going on. I guess she is en- 
couraging him some in playing tricks.” 

Sarah looked up in quick alarm. She 
didn’t like those tricks of Absalom’s; she 
never had liked them. 

“Between ’em they made your mother and 
me laugh till we cried ; that was the first 
day she sat up,” continued Uncle Abram. 
“She’s helped Absalom set up a show in the 
barn for to-night ; they’re going to have a 
great time, — sold tickets. Sent me a com- 
pliment’ry.” Uncle Abram chuckled, and 
rubbed his hands as if at great good fortune. 
“Wonder she didn’t say anything to you 
about it.” 

‘‘I — I haven’t been over for two weeks, 
and when she came over here, week before 
last, she was very busy, looking after pupils 
in French,” she explained, but with height- 
ened color. She wondered that Sarah had 
said nothing to her about the projected 


SARAH THE LESS 


75 


show. But then Sarah the Less knew very 
well how much she would dislike such en- 
couragement of Absalom in his foolishness. 
How strange it was to be so light-minded 
with so much care upon her! 

“I have been foolish to trust her! How 
could I trust her again?” she thought, with 
sudden alarm. 

‘‘They’ve borrowed Levi Tackaberry’s rag 
bags and they’re going to have a proces- 
sion — ‘The beggars are coming to town.’ 
Levi Tackaberry’s tin wagon has been stand- 
ing in your barn every night for a long spell, 
so’s they could look the bags over. Orindy, 
she’s in it heart and soul. She’d make Levi 
give ’em every rag he had if they wanted it! 
Absalom is going to play his tricks — they do 
sa}^ there ain’t a magician hardly anywhere 
that can beat him — and do some lightning 
calculating. They do say the schoolmaster 
is some astonished at Absalom’s lightning 
calculating, and they expect to draw a crowd. 
Seems kind of curious that you shouldn’t be 
knowing of it. But there ! She and Absa- 
lom ain’t anything more’n a pair of children 
together. I guess Orindy, she’ll see that 
they don’t set the barn afire or get into 


76 


SARAH THE LESS 


mischief; might as well let ’em have their 
fun.” 

As soon as Uncle Abram had gone, Sarah 
proceeded to make arrangements to go over 
to Gilboa that night. She would not wait 
for an invitation to the show; a show — the 
vulgar sort of thing that she had tried so 
hard to keep Absalom from having anything 
to do with ! 

She sent a message to the broker’s boy, 
asking for a postponement of his lesson. It 
was too late for the stage when she was 
ready to go, but Josiah Stover, the milkman, 
allowed her to wedge herself in among his 
empty, rattling cans, and although Josiah was 
collecting and was obliged to make numer- 
ous stops, they reached Gilboa before eight 
o’clock. 

Sarah slipped into the barn, which was 
brilliantly lighted and from which came the 
sounds of a fiddle. She impatiently thrust 
aside Iky Bemis, who demanded her ticket, 
and Iky was forced reluctantly to admit the 
claims of relationship, although he repeated, 
insistently, that there were ‘'no compli- 
ment’ries.” 

Antoine Pedeloupe, the half-witted French 


SARAH THE LESS 


77 


boy at the poorhouse, who had a remarkable 
gift as a violinist, was mounted upon a bar- 
rel, playing, with Absalom’s old dog Dandy, 
who always barked at the sound of music, 
as an accompanist. A voice, clear and res- 
onant — Sarah recognized it as that of Sarah 
the Less — rose now and then above the 
noise : — 

“Hark! hark! the dogs do bark, 

The beggars are coming to town ; 

Some in rags and some in tags, 

And some in velvet gowns.” 

The procession was rather funny, Sarah 
Rogers admitted to herself, in spite of her 
distaste for the proceedings. The contents 
of Levi Tackaberry’s rag bags had been used 
with skill and discrimination. Absalom had 
before shown a pretty talent for Fourth of 
July “horribles,” and he found a fine field 

for its display in the beggars’ coming to 
town. 

It was just the sort of thing that she 

didn’t wish Absalom to do, his sister said 

to herself, and her face was hot with vexa- 
tion. His tricks were even worse; she didn’t 
wish to have Absalom laughed at as a 

mountebank. 


78 


SARAH THE LESS 


She looked about her in a bewildered way 
at the audience. It was an astonishingly 
large one. There were chairs in the stalls 
and benches upon the hay lofts — all full ; 
eager faces of men and women as well as 
children looked out from the open doors of 
the granary and the wood shed. 

Sarah caught sight of the minister and 
the schoolmaster, and her face flushed still 
more deeply. In some of the reserved seats 
was a party of Highbury people, — Grace Al- 
bee and some of her set, and Margaret Sib- 
ley, whom Sarah Stuyvesant scarcely knew ; 
Mark Sibley, too, Margaret’s brother; and, — 
could it be possible? — with Mark was the 
professor of mathematics whom the Sibleys 
had once invited her to meet. 

Sarah Rogers felt as if she were growing 
dazed. She seemed suddenly to have found 
herself in a magic realm ; the beggars’ procession 
was a witches’ dance. Was that her mother, 
leaning back in a rocking-chair, looking pale, 
but laughing gayly at the procession? Could 
she like to see Absalom mounted upon a 
barrel, with a wand in his hand, like a cheap 
magician, and crying out, ‘Tresto ! change !” as 
Sarah had heard him cry out when she entered? 


SARAH THE LESS 


79 


There seemed to be a change in the order 
of the proceedings, now. There seemed to 
be something better than trick-playing in this 
unusual gift of Absalom’s. But Uncle 
Abram had seen her from his seat in the 
great kitchen rocking-chair, where he was 
making himself proudly conspicuous. 

'‘He whisked my watch right out of my 
pocket, and when he cut open a big pump- 
kin, there ’twas !” he said, chuckling with 
delight. Uncle Abram had always shown 
what Sarah had felt to be a misguided sym- 
pathy with Absalom’s trick-playing. 

“And Deacon Morrill’s watch and chain 
were in Dr. Parker’s hat, over t’other side 
of the barn; — kind of a suspicious thing for 
the doctor!” Uncle Abram chuckled again. 
“That boy does beat all! He held Orindy’s 
ring that she let him take, right up before 
the audience, and the next minute he sent 
little Billy Sykes to take it out of a big 
rutybagy turnip, top of the barrel! And one 
of the beggars in the procession found Dr. 
Parker’s seal ring somehow on his finger. 
I tell you it’s made lots of fun!” 

“I don’t care for such fun! I don’t like 
to have Absalom do it,” said Sarah, stiffly. 


8o 


SARAH THE LESS 


“He never will amount to anything if he is 
encouraged in it.” 

But Uncle Abram was not listening to her. 
There had come a burst of applause from 
the audience, at one of Absalom’s arithmet- 
ical feats. 

Sarah tried to hear the next one. She 
was not ashamed of Absalom’s gifts in that 
direction. She had been proud to hear the 
schoolmaster admit that Absalom had “given 
him hard mathematical nuts to crack,” and 
proud that when she had privately sent one 
of his arithmetical puzzles to the Cumberland 
County Clarion, it had been accepted and 
printed. Absalom had been angry at this. 
He was, it had seemed, strangely sensitive, 
and shrank from a public display of his 
mathematical gifts. And yet here he was, 
only too ready, in his sister’s opinion, to 
make a mountebank of himself. His quick- 
ness of hand he was always ready to exhibit 
and was sensitive only about his quickness 
of brain. Sarah had always felt this to be 
very provoking of Absalom. She wondered 
how he had been induced to display his gift 
on this occasion. Her heart thrilled as she 
listened. Absalom had been delving into 


SARAH THE LESS 


8l 


those huge mathematical tomes that the 
schoolmaster had lent him since she had 
been away from home. There was wonder 
on the faces of the audience; the same emo- 
tion mingled with respect on the face of the 
professor of mathematics. 

She kept herself in the background. Ab- 
salom might be confused, he might even re- 
fuse to go on if he should see her. Sarah 
Stuyvesant seemed to have an influence over 
him already that she herself had never been 
able to acquire. Was the pang that this 
discovery gave her, envy and jealousy? Sarah 
Rogers feared it, and despised herself. 

The ''show” resolved itself into a social 
occasion. The professor of mathematics con- 
gratulated Sarah on her brother’s remarkable 
gift. It was a much greater gift, he said, 
than Miss Stuyvesant had led him to sup- 
pose. He did not explain how Miss Stuyve- 
sant had happened to invite him there. The 
schoolmaster was telling her how he had 
always hoped that Absalom would have an 
opportunity to develop his mathematical talent. 

Every one was shaking hands with her 
mother and there were tears of pride and 
joy in her eyes. 


82 


SARAH THE LESS 


Antoine Pedeloupe’s fiddle was started up 
again and there was another march of the 
beggars led by two of them, Orinda Jenks 
and Levi Tackaberry the tin peddler, — Levi 
being a wooer whom Orinda had put off for 
fifteen years. 

The young people from Highbury joined 
in the procession and in the games that followed 
it, and Sarah saw Absalom — Absalom who 
was so odd that he always hid himself when 
she had a party! — joining in the festivities 
and apparently making himself agreeable to 
Grace Albee. 

Sarah Roge-rs found it difficult to make 
herself at home. Her heart was burning 
with indignation against Sarah Stuyvesant, 
who did not come near her nor meet her 
eye. She forced herself to admit that Sarah 
had done well in inducing Absalom to dis- 
play his mathematical gift, but why had she 
so ignored her? 

The festivities were breaking up when the 
voice of the mathematical professor came to 
her ears and roused her from her bewildered 
reflections. 

‘'Have all the trinkets been returned?” it 
said. “My ring has not come back to 


me 


SARAH THE LESS 83 

and I fear it may have stuck fast in some 
turnip or pumpkin !” 

Sarah Rogers’ responsibility at once as- 
serted itself. If there was a difficulty it 
could not be left to Absalom and Sarah 
Stuyvesant. It would be just like either of 
them to allow a ring to be lost. 

She called out, with a voice of authority, 
“Absalom, will you see that Professor McMil- 
lan’s ring is returned to him at once?” 


CHAPTER V 


I DON’T know but you are too angry 
with me to want me to come back 
here at all,” said Sarah Stuyvesant, 
standing doubtfully in the doorway of the 
living room at 15 Jayne Street. 

Sarah Rogers was delving at geometry 
with a great pile of books beside her on 
the table. She tried to smooth a quick, 
sharp frown from her brow as she looked 
up. She was saying to herself very often 
in these days, that she must be at least just 
to Sarah Stuyvesant ; she must be ! She was 
afraid of being influenced by such mean 
traits as envy and jealousy. Sarah Stuyvesant 
had acquired such an influence over Absa- 
lom ! Sarah did not think that she should be 
jealous if she would use it only for Absa- 
lom’s good; she did not think she should be. 
Even Uncle Abram had fallen under Sarah 
Stuyvesant’s spell. He had come in to see 
his niece twice, when he had been in High- 
bury, apparently only to tell her with em- 
phasis, in Absalom’s phrase, that Sarah Stuy- 
84 



PAGE 98. 


“'I RECKON THEY'LL PLEASE YOU BOTH, 
EITHER ONE OF THEM!' HE ADDED." 







SARAH THE LESS 85 

vesant was “considerable of a gal,” and to 
chuckle over the success of the “show.” 

At each visit Sarah had asked him if Pro- 
fessor McMillan's ring had been found, and 
he had replied that he believed they hadn’t 
come across it yet, but he guessed it would 
turn up all right. Absalom appeared “to run 
of an idee” that he had slipped it on the 
finger of one of the beggars in the proces- 
sion, but none of them had it. ’Twas 
nothing to be wondered at if the boy had 
become a little confused with such wonderful 
tricks as he had done. Why the presti — 
what d’ye call him? — at the town hall had 
not been able to hold a candle to him ! 

As for the ring — well, he had heard that 
it was a diamond, but Professor McMillan 
didn’t seem inclined to make much fuss 
about it. He certainly hadn’t laid up any- 
thing against Absalom. If he had, he 
wouldn’t have offered to teach him mathe- 
matics. That was going to be a great thing 
for Absalom. Sarah had heard about it, 
hadn’t she? 

Yes, Sarah had heard. Absalom had come 
to Jayne Street and told her about it when 
he came over to see the professor by ap- 


86 


SARAH THE LESS 


pointment. He had seemed very much 
pleased. Sarah said this and she did not 

say what was uppermost in her mind — that 
she wished Absalom would not take the loss 
of the professor’s ring so easily. It seemed 
like being so disagreeably a wet blanket to 
say that. 

“And it all came about by way of that 

gal !” pursued Uncle Abram. “Kind of curi- 
ous, wa’n’t it? that she should find that he 

was an old friend that she and her mother 
had got acquainted with ’board of a steamer. 
But it isn’t everybody that would have taken 
advantage of it so quick to help Absalom !” 

“It was very kind of Sarah to try to help 
Absalom,” his niece replied; but her voice 
sounded strange and unnatural in her own 

ears. 

“I calculate ’twas kind of a lucky day for 
us when she got fhat gal to sit down on my 
hat,” continued Uncle Abram. “That wa’n’t 
anything but a piece of childish foolish- 
ness, though I was kind of riled at the 
time. I was surprised that you wanted her 
to live with you. Well, well, it’s a Rogers’ 
trait to see through folks, and I guess you’ve 
got your share of it.” Sarah had not been 


SARAH THE LESS 


87 


able to force herself to any satisfactory re- 
sponsiveness. Uncle Abram had seemed to 
become slowly aware of this, for he had 
turned at the door as he went away to 
say : — 

“I don’t expect you think much of them 
shows of Absalom’s. But you can’t say 
but ^what this one turned out pretty well. 
Oh, about that ring. I’ll stir Absalom up 
to find it. He thought it might be in a 
pumpkin or a turnip, but he’s been ’most 
through the whole heap looking for it. He 
kind of whisked things round in a hurry ! 
You knew about Dr. Parker having Deacon 
Morrill’s watch in his hat? Kind of hard 
upon the doctor, wa’n’t it?” And Uncle 
Abram went off chuckling although the ring 
was lost. A ring, even although it might 
be a diamond, was not of much consequence 
from Uncle Abram’s point of view. He had 
said that for a man to go round with a ring 
on his little finger appeared to him to be 
next door to curling his hair. 

It was a few days after this visit of Uncle 
Abram’s that Sarah Stuyvesant returned to 
Jayne Street, in a doubtful state of mind con- 
cerning her welcome. 


88 


SARAH THE LESS 


“Oh, yes; I would rather you would come 
back,” Sarah Rogers said, and she knew that 
her tone was even more constrained than she 
meant it should be. 

“Perhaps you mean that you think I 
should be able to do less mischief here than 
there,” said Sarah Stuyvesant, half jocose, 
half serious. 

“It was kind — very kind of you to take 
care of mother. She said that no one could 
have had a more devoted nurse. And you 
have helped Absalom. For Professor McMil- 
lan to have become interested in him is the 
greatest of good fortune.” Sarah Rogers 
spoke heartily, yet the effort she made was 
apparent to Sarah Stuyvesant’s sensitive 
ears. 

“You didn’t like it because I didn’t tell 
you about the show,” said Sarah Stuyvesant. 
“But you wouldn’t have let us have it. So 
Absalom said. He made me promise at the 
very first, before I thought it was going to 
be such an affair. I thought it would be 
fun, and I — I was a little dull and I didn’t 
see any harm in it. It was only when I 
happened to meet Professor McMillan at the 
Sibleys’, where I had gone to get French 


SARAH THE LESS 89 

pupils, that I thought of what he might do 
for Absalom.” 

“I can’t be otherwise than grateful to 
you,” said Sarah. “And my mother’s con- 
sent was enough.” 

“But you don’t like it, and you don’t like 
me!” burst forth Sarah, impetuously. “You 
can’t forgive me, and I don’t wonder. I 

realize more and more what trouble I 
brought upon you — more and more as I real- 
ize how hard your life has been compared 
with mine. But I’m going to pay the 

money, so far as that goes ! I’ve got to do 
it right away! I can’t bear to have it hang- 
ing over me. I’ve sold the walking dress 
and the hat that mother sent me, to Grace 
Albee. She is just my size; the gown was 
a perfect fit. It was for me, too ! You 

should have seen me in it ! And the hat 

was from Virot. Oh, but mother has taste, 
and knows how to make money go a long 
way!” Sarah sat upon her trunk, which the 
expressman had brought up to the inner 
room, and showed a face suddenly tear- 
drenched, through the doorway. 

“Grace Albee was glad enough to get 
them,” she continued, in a sob-shaken voice; 


90 


SARAH THE LESS 


‘‘and well she might be ! A Paris gown 
and hat don’t come to Highbury every day 
in the week.” 

Sarah Rogers rose suddenly from her 
books and went and put a comforting arm 
round the shaken figure on the trunk. 

“It was hard for you to have to sell your 
things !” she said, impulsively. “It was hard 
at our house, too, I know it was !” 

“If you know it, that’s a good deal of con- 
solation !” said Sarah Stuyvesant, becoming 
suddenly calmer. “Not that you can help 
it ! To atone so far as I can is what I must 
do to keep from despising myself! Don’t 
you see? I must do it. No one can help 
me. When I was a little girl at a board- 
ing school in the south of France, we used 
continually to play the game of conse- 
quences, and there was a moralizing teacher 
who never failed to say before we finished : 
‘Remember, my children, it is so with all 
our deeds, good and evil — there are conse- 
quences! Always consequences!’ We used 
to laugh at her. I wish that I had laid 
her moralizing to heart, instead ! One may 
repent, of course, and feel better; but I can’t 
repent and let you pay for the dress, even 


SARAH THE LESS 


91 


although you were able and willing. I 
helped you — it really helped you for me to 
keep your house and take care of your 
mother, didn’t it?” She caught Sarah Rog- 
ers’ arm and looked up with breathless 
eagerness into her face. 

“It helped me very much. I felt that I 
could trust you as I scarcely could have 
trusted a hired nurse. If it hadn’t been for 
you I should have been obliged to go 
home.” At last Sarah Rogers’ voice was 
really cordial. 

“You felt that you could trust me, after 
the dress?” said Sarah Stuyvesant, eagerly. 
Her countenance fell suddenly. “And then I 
helped Absalom to get up a show when I 
knew you disliked to have him play those 
tricks !” 

“I can’t complain of that since it turned 
out so well,” said Sarah, after only a mo- 
ment’s hesitation. “Although I am sorry 
that Professor McMillan’s ring was lost.” 

“Oh, that ring !” Sarah Stuyvesant’s face 
changed, suddenly. “It has worried me so 
to have it lost ! But Professor McMillan 
is very kind ; he insists that it doesn’t 
matter.” 


92 


SARAH THE LESS 


“But I feel, and I hope that Absalom 
feels, as you do about the dress — that the 
ring must be paid for.” 

Sarah Stuyvesant’s face flushed, slowly. 
“Of course it is much the same thing,” she 
said. “But it will be found ! Oh, of course 
it will be found ! It can’t entirely have dis- 
appeared.” 

“It seems to me that it would be quite 
possible for a ring to disappear, dropped 
upon a barn floor where there were wisps 
of hay and tramping feet and dragging 
skirts.” 

“But it wasn’t dropped upon the floor — 
how do you know that it was dropped upon 
the floor?” said Sarah Stuyvesant, with — 
as Sarah Rogers remembered afterwards — a 
queer little catch in her voice. 

“It only seemed probable that it was,” said 
Sarah Rogers. “Absalom still seems to have 
hopes of finding it.” 

“There is a great heap of pumpkins, and 
he thinks he may have stuck - the ring into 
one that got rolled away. People were sit- 
ting on them, you know. The way he did 
was to have the stem of the pumpkin cut 
out and a hole made under it. Then there 


SARAH THE LESS 


93 


was cement on the stem. He put the trin- 
ket into the hole and then cemented the 
stem on again. There are a good many 
'prepared’ pumpkins in the heap, but he 
hasn’t yet found the one with the ring in it.” 

"He said his first impression was that he 
had put it on the finger of one of the beg- 
gars. He did that with one or two rings,” 
said Absalom’s sister. 

"But none of the beggars would have run 
away with Professor McMillan’s ring,” said 
Sarah Stuyvesant. 

"No, none of them would have,” said 
Sarah Rogers, with conviction. "They are 
all Gilboa people whom we know. If it 
should not be found” — 

"Don’t think of such a thing as that, yet! 
don’t! I couldn’t bear it. Let me get 
Polly Pendexter’s wedding dress paid for be- 
fore I have to think of another dreadful 
piece of mischief that I’ve done!” cried Sarah 
the Less. 

"You would not be responsible for the 
ring,” said Sarah Rogers. "That is Absa- 
lom’s affair. Although, of course, if” — 

"If I hadn’t encouraged him to have the 
show and invited Professor McMillan,” inter- 


94 


SARAH THE LESS 


riiptecl Sarah Stuyvesant. “I have been only 
a dreadful trouble to you from the first !” 

“You may have brought us great good 
fortune in interesting Professor McMillan in 
Absalom,” said Sarah Rogers. But when 
one is trying to be just, the effort is very 
likely to show in the tones of one’s voice. 

It was a relief to Sarah Rogers when 
there came a knock at the door and Uncle 
Abram’s gruff voice called out a greeting 
and Uncle Abram’s rugged face looked in 
upon them, with the cheerful and kindly ex- 
pression which it almost always now wore 
on his visits to Jayne Street. 

Sarah Stuyvesant promptly turned her 
back and retreated out of sight, disliking to 
have the visitor see her tears. Sarah Rogers 
shut the door behind her when she went 
out to the living room. She felt suddenly 
a wave of real pity and tenderness for Sarah 
Stuyvesant, and a desire to protect her. 
There was even a feeling of respect mingled 
with this softer sentiment. The girl had 
really borne suffering in the effort to make 
amends for what she had done. Suffering 
was not too large a word to describe Sarah’s 
feeling at parting with her Paris gown and 


SARAH THE LESS 


95 


hat, certainly not too large to express 
what she had undergone as nurse and house- 
keeper. Chafing-dish parties in a Paris flat 
had not prepared her for Gilboa winter 
housekeeping! Her small hands had pathetic 
bruises and callous spots which she tried to 
hide. 

“Sarah will be out in a minute,” she ex- 
plained to Uncle Abram, whom she suspected 
of a lively expectation of sweetbread and 
oyster luncheons, now that Sarah Stuyvesant 
had come back. Uncle Abram’s economical 
principles had, somehow, received a severe 
setback in the last few months. He had 
supplemented the supplies from the farm 
with dainties from the market and had mani- 
fested disappointment that, when her house- 
mate was away, Sarah relapsed into perpetual 
johnny cake. 

“She — she’s some smart ! that is more’n 
what you’d think she would be,” said Uncle 
Abram, always ready now, with praises of 
Sarah Stuyvesant. 

“There — there’s a good deal that is fine 
about her,” said his niece, with an emphasis 
that meant a sudden impulse to atone for 
much silence or faint praise. “She has had 


96 


SARAH THE LESS 


a hard time — a very hard time. She wanted 
to pay something — it was a debt of honor — 
and she sold the Paris gown and hat that 
her mother had just sent her.” 

Somewhat carried out of herself by sym- 
pathy and self-reproach, Sarah Rogers forgot 
the probability that from Uncle Abram’s 
manly standpoint this self-sacrifice would 
not seem so noble or so extreme as from 
her own. 

“Sold her dress and her bonnet ! What has 
she sold her dress and her bonnet for?” de- 
manded Uncle Abram, who believed in call- 
ing female headgear by the name that it had 
borne when he was young. 

“She felt that she ought to — to pay a 
debt,” said Sarah Rogers. “She likes pretty 

things to wear, too ; she likes them even 

better than most girls.” Quite unconsciously 
Uncle Abram’s niece heaved a sigh. She 

had scarcely had time to sigh for pretty 
things in her life, or had even thought of 

the possibility of having them, but she, too, 
liked them ! 

“What kind of a bonnet have you got?” 
demanded Uncle Abram, after a moment of 
deep reflection. 


SARAH THE LESS 


97 


“Only my last winter one, yet. Fm — Fm 
getting a good many pupils,” answered 

Sarah. “It does very well,” she added, 
quickly. “A girl who is borrowing money 
to pay for her education must not think of 
new hats !” 

Uncle Abram sat in silence for a few 
minutes. 

“Do you expect that Sarah Stuyvesant 
would feel like cooking up if I should go 

and fetch some sweetbreads and oysters?” he 
asked, at length. 

“I think she always likes to,” Sarah an- 

swered. She thought that a little feast 
might cheer her housemate; and she always 
liked to please Uncle Abram, who had shown 
himself so much kinder than she had ex- 

pected he would. 

He started up at once and went out, and 
his niece went and told Sarah Stuyvesant, 
who smiled through her tears and immedi- 
ately donned her long-sleeved apron. 

The market was not far away, but the 
two girls waited so long for Uncle Abram’s 
return that his niece began to fear lest a 
return of his economical principles might 
have induced him to walk sternly by the 

7 


98 


SARAH THE LESS 


market. But at last his heavy footsteps were 
heard upon the stairs. When his niece 
opened the door he entered with the bundle 
of sweetbreads under his arm and a large paste- 
board bonnet box in each hand. A boy 
with a can of oysters followed him up the 
stairs. He sat down with a box on each 
side of him and emitted a chuckle of satis- 
faction. 

‘‘I don’t know but ’twas a little mite reck- 
less, but seeing I haven’t got a great many 
to do for, I made up my mind that I would 
get both of you gals a new bonnet! Open 
the boxes, Sarah 1 I’ll leave you to take 
your pick and settle it amongst you. They 
come high, but I was bound they should be 
the right thing !” 

The genuine pleasure of benevolence, all 
the greater because it was so new an ex- 
perience in his life, fairly transformed Uncle 
Abram’s grim and rugged countenance. 

‘T reckon they’ll please you both, either 
one of them !” he added. 

The girls opened the boxes trying to sub- 
due their amazement to proper politeness. 
Sarah Rogers’ unsophisticated frankness al- 
most betrayed her into an exclamation of 


SARAH THE LESS 


99 


dismay when she took out a gaudy, tasteless, 
overladen piece of cheap millinery. 

“Try it on, Sarah,” she said, hastily. 
“And yet perhaps this smaller one would be 
more becoming to you !” 

The second hat that she had taken from 
its box was smaller, but an even more start- 
ling combination of violet-colored feathers 

and flowers and dazzling beads and buckles. 

“They’re beauties, both of ’em, ain’t they?” 
said Uncle Abram, triumphantly. “And 

Orindy will have it that I’m color-blind, so 
none of the women folks round will trust 

me to buy ’em a skein of worsted. They 
can’t say that I haven’t got some taste, any- 
how !” 

“It was very kind of you to buy them for 
us,” said Sarah Stuyvesant repressing a shud- 
der and painful recollection of her Paris hat. 

“I think I would better keep the large 

one,” said Sarah Rogers, heroically. “It is 
the more suitable for me. I am sure it was 
very kind of you. Uncle Abram !” 

“I wa’n’t going to have it said that my 
niece had to wear her last winter’s hat when 
she I wis going among genteel Highbury 
folk^,” said Uncle Abram, so highly pleased 


L.ofC. 


lOO 


SARAH THE LESS 


with himself that he wondered why he had 
not done this sort of thing before. “And 
as for the other little gal” — with a kindly 
nod in Sarah Stuyvesant’s direction — “why, 
she was so handy and took such good care 
of your mother that I kind of felt as if some 
of us ought to make her a present.” 

“I don't deserve it ! I don't deserve it !” 
cried Sarah Stuyvesant, and her voice was 
shrill with sudden excitement. Sarah Rogers 
regarded her, wonderingly. Did she mean 
that she did not deserve this horror of a 
hat? Was she sarcastic? There was al- 
ways something that she could not quite 
understand about Sarah Stuyvesant. 

“I don’t deserve that you should be kind 
to me ! I have brought nothing but trouble 
upon you — nothing but trouble !” continued 
Sarah, with threatening tears. 

Sarah Rogers found an opportunity to 
shake her head at her, warningly. Why 
would she be so foolish? Sarah was very 
anxious that Uncle Abram should not know 
of the trouble about Polly Pendexter’s dress. 

“Trouble? Why, you surely ain’t think- 
ing about that old hat of mine that you 
sat down on the first day we ever see 


SARAH THE LESS 


lOI 


you? Come to think of it, I am heap- 
ing coals of fire buying you one.” Uncle 
Abram chuckled, delightedly. “Come, now, 
you needn’t feel that way about it! Orindy 
said hwas time I had a new hat anyhow, 
and I expect it was. It did me a sight of 
good, it really did, to buy them two hats 
and think how proud you’d feel wearing ’em 
and how the folks in church would stare 
when you come over to spend Sunday. 
You just go to work and make the sweet- 
breads taste as good as they did the last 
time and we’ll not say anything about my 
old hat!” 

Sarah Stuyvesant tried to be responsive to 
his jesting mood, but, as she went about her 
cooking, Sarah Rogers observed how pale 
and worn her face had grown. 

After Uncle Abram had finished his 
luncheon, which he ate with great zest, and 
gone his way, Absalom suddenly came in — 
Absalom in overalls and jumper, an oxgoad 
in his hand. 

“I’m working in the woods for Orrin 
Cressy; didn’t she tell you?” he said to his 
sister, with a nod toward Sarah Stuyvesant. 
“Come out with a load of logs. Yes, I’ve 


102 


SARAH THE LESS 


given up school and Professor McMillan. I 
had to. There wasn’t any other way. Kind 
of queer luck we have !” Absalom laughed 
a hoarse and unmusical laugh. ‘T found out 
that the ring I lost was worth more than a 
hundred dollars ! Of course a fellow must 
pay for it. The professor said ’twas of no 
consequence, or, if I wanted to, I could pay 
for it after I got my education. Maybe 
that would be wiser, if a fellow could stand 
it. I tried to think so, but I found that I 
wasn’t the kind that could stand it. I’ve 
got to pay up and start fair and square.” 

His sister sat down opposite him with her 
elbow resting upon her knees and her chin 
upon her palms, and stared at him intently. 
She thought that one would scarcely have 
known him for Absalom — Absalom who 
shirked work and liked to play tricks and 
was generally unsatisfactory. The true man 
in Absalom had suddenly appeared. 

‘That’s it !” said Sarah Stuyvesant, sym- 
pathetically. “You’ve got to pay it so as 
not to hate yourself!” 

“Why didn’t you tell me what Absalom 
had done?” asked Absalom’s sister, turning 
suddenly to Sarah the Less. 


SARAH THE LESS 


103 


‘‘I couldn’t bear to — oh, I couldn’t bear 
to !” she answered. ‘‘Everything has been my 
fault.” 

She burst into tears and rushed into the 
inner room and shut the door. 


CHAPTER VI 


A bsalom would never be anybody now 
that he had given up his lessons with 
Professor McMillan, his sister thought, 
despairingly. It had been a sudden and 
short-lived hope that the professor’s kindness 
and Absalom’s unexpected ambition had 
given her. At least, things were not much 
worse with him than they had been before; 
he had left school, but he had shown a 
manliness and a moral sense which she had 
not supposed that he possessed ; and she 
tried to comfort herself with this view of the 
matter. 

He would probably go along doing “jobs” 
like this wood-chopping for Orrin Cressy, 
after he had paid for the lost ring. But 
even that would be better than giving 
shows ! There had been a fear that Absa- 
lom would never do anything that involved 
efiort. Many Gilboa people had said, in 
Sarah’s hearing, that good old stock had 
“run out” in Absalom. This sudden out- 
cropping of the strong moral sense of his 
104 



I THINK THE YOUNG LADY SAID IT HAD BEEN 


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SARAH THE LESS IO5 

Puritan ancestors seemed a refutation of that 
charge. 

If only he need not have missed the 
chance to develop his remarkable mathemati- 
cal ability! 

Sarah revolved in her mind a plan to ask 
Uncle Abram to lend him the money to pay 
for the ring. But even if Uncle Abram’s 
newly developed liberality should extend so 
far as that, which was doubtful, she was sure 
that Absalom would not accept it. He was 
queer; very hard to influence. It began to 
appear, now, that he had strength of char- 
acter. He had determined to pay that 
money and ‘'start fair and square.” 

But that he would sink into his old, in- 
dolent, unambitious ways, and never start at 
all, again, was what his sister feared. 

She felt an impulse to ask Sarah Stuyve- 
sant to influence him to try to borrow the 
money of Uncle Abram. Something held 
her back; she was not sure whether it was 
a subtle distrust of Sarah or a jealousy for 
which she was ready to despise herself. 
Sarah Stuyvesant could influence both Absa- 
lom and Uncle Abram as she could not. 
She resolved to think the matter over and 


io6 


SARAH THE LESS 


not allow herself to be influenced by any 
unworthy sentiment. 

“You needn’t feel bound to keep the large 
hat. I couldn’t look worse than I do in the 
small one!” said Sarah Stuyvesant, dejectedly, 
as they cleared away the remnants of the 
luncheon — to which Absalom had not failed 
to do justice with an appetite sharpened by 
wood-chopping. “I suppose if we go over to 
Gilboa next Sunday, we must wear them.” 

“I am not thinking about hats,” said Sarah 
Rogers, briefly, even sharply. Then she 
looked at the lesser Sarah’s pinched and tear- 
stained face and reproached herself for 
being so unnecessarily disagreeable. More- 
over, that dreadful hat had not been a 
small trial to her before the sharp dis- 
appointment about Absalom had driven it 
out of her mind. 

“I don’t think we need to wear the hats,” 
she said. “I think we could change them, 
and Uncle Abram would never know the 
difference. I know that he has always been 
said to be color-blind. Let us go down to 
the milliner’s, now.” 

Sarah Stuyvesant, red-eyed and dejected, 
did not wish to try on hats, but she wished 


SARAH THE LESS 


107 


— oh, she wished — that Sarah Rogers would 
change them both. 

“There are only a few things that suit 
me,” she said, “and you know exactly what 
they are.” So Sarah Rogers, glad to atone 
for being disagreeable, and not altogether 
unmindful of the pleasurable possibilities of 
having a pretty hat, took the two hatboxes 
to the milliner’s shop, and exchanged the 
hats, much to her satisfaction. 

There were some alterations to be made 
and the hats were to be sent home. So 
Sarah Rogers walked homeward, unburdened, 
and looked in at the shop windows along the 
main street to divert her mind. 

She halted suddenly before the door of 
Highbury’s one large jewelry store. She 
would like to know if Professor McMillan’s 
ring could really be worth one hundred dol- 
lars. It was only a small diamond. She 
had observed it on his finger, because in 
Gilboa men did not wear rings. 

She entered the store, and pointing to 
some rings in a tray under the glass case 
asked the price. The polite clerk took the 
tray out and did not permit himself to look 
in the least surprised, as she had expected 


io8 


SARAH THE LESS 


he would do, that she should wish to know 
the price of diamond rings. 

‘That — that is the one I wish to know the 
price of she exclaimed, suddenly, pointing 
to a small brilliant stone in a black enamel 
setting. It was, she thought, exactly like 
Professor McMillan’s lost ring. 

“That — oh, that would cost you about a 
hundred dollars, but it is not for sale — at 
least, not just yet.” The clerk smiled, 
slightly. “It is not a new ring and the 
owner wishes the opportunity to buy it back 
again within three months. We don’t do a 
pawnbroking business” — the clerk smiled 
again — “ but there is a young ladies’ 
school here and we have sometimes been 
asked to accommodate in that way. That 
is a beautiful stone, although it is so 
small.” 

“A — a young lady?” gasped Sarah Rogers. 

The thought that flashed into her mind 
was too vague, too bewildering, to be called 
a suspicion; almost instantly, she reproached 
herself that it should come at all. The clerk 
glanced at her, evidently with a doubt 
whether his confidences were prudent. The 
stamp of rustic Gdboa was still upon her 


SARAH THE LESS 


109 


rather than that of the seminary, and he 
looked reassured. 

“Allowances from home sometimes run 
short,” he explained, “and the young ladies 
sell their jewelry.” 

“It — it is a lady’s ring, isn’t it?” faltered 
Sarah Rogers. 

“I think the young lady said that it had 
been worn by a gentleman,” said the clerk, 
and placed it upon his own little finger. 

Professor McMillan’s hand with the glitter- 
ing ring was what Sarah saw rather than the 
clerk’s. 

She hurried away with a murmured excuse 
for haste. 

Absalom had put Professor McMillan’s 
ring Upon one of the beggar’s fingers, as 
he had thought at first — upon Sarah Stuyve- 
sant’s finger. She had sold the ring, in- 
tending, perhaps, to buy it and return it 
later, as the clerk had suggested. Perhaps 
she had persuaded herself, because she meant 
to do this, that it was not a theft, but only 
a borrowing. 

It seemed to Sarah Rogers too much like 
a nightmare to be true ! Such things as 
thefts had not come into her life. Now, 


no 


SARAH THE LESS 


the girl who had lived with her, who had 
been her close friend and influenced Absalom 
as no one had ever before influenced him, 
had been guilty of this dreadful thing! 

She must have done it that she might pay 
for the dress at once; she had said that she 
could not endure to have the debt hang 
over her. Her sense of honor was then 
merely a pretense. She was assuming to 
be what she was not. In her effort to be 
just to her, she (Sarah Rogers) had almost 
persuaded herself that it was her influence 
that had developed in Absalom that fine in- 
tegrity that had made him abandon the op- 
portunity that was so dear to him in order 
to be able to “start fair and square.” 

Sarah Rogers’ heart burned within her at 
the thought of the wrong done to Absalom, 
as she walked along the Highbury main 
street, scarcely conscious, in her excitement, 
of where she was going. 

Why had Sarah Stuyvesant made this op- 
portunity for Absalom, only to snatch it 
away so cruelly and with so coarse a sin? 

Professor McMillan came up with and 
greeted her and walked along by her side. 

“I am very much interested in your 


SARAH THE LESS 


III 


brother, Miss Rogers,” he said, with abrupt 
earnestness, “and I want you to coax him 
out of this Quixotic idea of abandoning his 
studies to earn money to pay for my ring that 
was unfortunately lost on the night of his show. 
It is altogether foolish, you know! I have 
told him that he may pay for it after he 
gets started upon his career in life, but he’ll 
not listen to reason.” Sarah forced a non- 
committal response out of her bewildered 
consciousness. 

“I hope you are not upholding him in his 
stubbornness,” continued the professor. “I 
rather suspect that he is influenced by my 
original and independent little friend who is, 
I believe, your friend and roommate. She 
has such a sturdy little Puritan conscience ! It is 
somewhat incongruous with her frivolous for- 
eign tastes and habits, and she says it has 
been developed by Highbury Seminary asso- 
ciations. Now, if you are responsible for 
her exaggerated conscientiousness, and she is 
responsible for your brother’s” — 

“I don’t think that Sarah Stuyvesant has 
any exaggerated conscientiousness,” inter- 
rupted Sarah Rogers, and her harsh tone 
that jarred upon his light one sounded grim 


1 12 


SARAH THE LESS 


and unpleasant in her own ears. Yet she 
did not repent of it. How could one help 
wishing to cry out upon Sarah Stuyvesant 
as a whited sepulcher? 

“I couldn’t persuade her to bring your 
brother to a better mind,” said Professor 
McMillan. “She said she liked that kind of 
a boy. Oh, I am quite sure that it is she 
who has put this high-flown notion into his 
head !” He spoke lightly and he looked 
with something of wonder at Sarah’s pale 
and severe face. 

“It isn’t like Absalom — not like what Ab- 
salom has always been,” said Sarah, slowly. 
“He hates to work. I think it may make a 
man of him.” 

At the same time she was thinking that 
she had been hasty in her dreadful suspicion 
of Sarah Stuyvesant. Sarah could not have 
done such a thing — she could not! 

“If it makes a man of him it will cer- 
tainly be better than making a mathema- 
tician,” said Professor McMillan. “I will 
grant you that there is not too much of that 
sort of honesty in the world. Still, I wish 
you would try to influence him to stick to 
his studies, since I am not suffering for 


SARAH THE LESS 


II3 

another ring. And, by the way, I want 
you also to persuade my little friend Sarah 
Stuyvesant not to work herself to death. 
She is looking very pale and worn. Her 
French accent is very much in demand, and 
she is taking too many children to teach. 
She seems to have some special need of 
earning money, but you mustn’t let her wear 
herself out. I have been very glad that she 
had such a friend as you.” 

Sarah murmured something, she was 
scarcely conscious what. Such a friend as 
she ! That was what she had meant to 
be — a friend who should teach Sarah better 
than to be so foolish and mischievous as 
to be expelled from school. And Sarah had 
brought such trouble upon her that her heart 
was bitter against her. 

But she must be just to her — she would 
be just, and try to put away from her this 
dreadful suspicion. It might be her duty, 
for Absalom’s sake, to discover the truth, but 
at least she would wait for positive proof 
before she believed Sarah guilty. 

Sarah was certainly making great efforts 
and sacrifices to pay for the dress she had 
spoiled; real sacrifices, for Sarah disliked 
8 


14 


SARAH THE LESS 


work as much as Absalom did. Sarah Rog- 
ers had felt the pathos of her small hands, 
bruised and hardened by the unaccustomed 
hard work at Gilboa. 

The unaccustomed teaching would be toil- 
some, too, but Sarah would persevere in it, 
her roommate felt sure. With all this sud- 
denly developed strength of character, was 
there a strange lack of moral sense? 

Sarah Rogers’ brain was bewildered with 
the effort to think the problem out. She 
must tell some one, ask some one’s 
advice. 

At the door of 15 Jayr e Street, Levi Tack- 
aberry’s tin-peddling wagon was standing. 
In the living room, Sarah Stuyvesant was en- 
tertaining Levi Tackaberry with the adapta- 
bility which was her very attractive charac- 
teristic. 

Gilboa was democratic and almost every 
man, woman and child in the town was 
Sarah Rogers’ friend. With “ a way she 
had with her,” as Orinda said, Sarah 
Stuyvesant was rapidly making them all her 
friends. 

But Levi Tackaberry was reticent of habit 
and now evidently disturbed in mind. He 


SARAH THE LESS 


II5 

was sitting with his whip held stiffly upright, 
responding to Sarah Stuyvesant’s efforts at 
conversation only by monosyllables. 

“I can’t make anything of him,” com- 
plained Sarah Stuyvesant, following her 
roommate into the inner room where she 
went to take off her things. “He wants to 
see you and he has something on his mind. 
How can Orinda think of marrying such a 
numskull?” 

“He isn’t exactly that. He has the repu- 
tation of being very sharp at a bargain ; 
that’s why he ‘ wants to marry Orinda,” said 
Sarah Rogers, unwontedly facetious in her 
effort not to show her feelings. 

“I want to consult you,” said Levi Tacka- 
berry, when Sarah Rogers had seated herself 
in the living room in an attentive attitude 
and with the doors closed, “as I wouldn’t 
consult any living being that wasn’t a good 
friend to Orindy. She promised to marry 
me, come New Year’s day, and she has gone 
back on her word again and she’ll not tell 
me the reason why. I want to know if you 
that are a friend to Orindy have got any 
idee of the reason why. I know Orindy 
thinks that you’ve got an old head on young 


ii6 


SARAH THE LESS 


shoulders, and if there’s anybody she would 
confide in ’twould be you.” 

Levi was tall and spare, with high cheek 
bones and an Adam’s apple by which he 
seemed in danger of being sufifocated. He 
was nervous, and he shuffled his feet un- 
easily and pounded the floor with his whip, 
as he talked. 

“She hasn’t confided in me, and I am 
very much surprised and very sorry,” said 
Sarah, sympathetically. 

“It was some time before she would agree 
to have me,” said Levi. “Everybody in Gil- 
boa knows that.” He smiled slightly in a melan- 
choly fashion. “But I never thought she 
would go back on her word after she named 
the day.” 

“It isn’t a bit like Orinda !” said Sarah 
Rogers. 

“That’s just it! It ain’t a mite like her, 
is it?” said Levi, eagerly. “That’s why I’m 
sure there’s some reason that I can’t make 
out. And I run of an idee that it has 
something to do with — with that gal in 
there !” 

Levi lowered his voice and nodded toward 
the closed door of the living room. 


SARAH THE LESS 


II7 

“Oh — oh, no, that couldn’t be!” exclaimed 
Sarah Rogers. “Why should you think 
that?” 

I.evi shuffled more uneasily than ever. 

“I don’t know as I could say exactly why,” 
he answered; “but she and Orindy has been 
back and forth considerable while she was 
over to your house. Orindy was learning her 
to do housework. She appeared to think a 
good deal of her, Orindy did. And, well, 
she ain’t Gilboa kind of folks, anyhow, and 
I didn’t know but she had got it into 
Orindy’s head that I wa’n’t good enough for 
her. No more I ain’t and I know it, but 
I — I’d be a good provider, and I’ve set by 
Orindy ever since she was a little girl. It 
don’t seem to be exactly the fair thing for 
anybody to try to set her ag’in me.” 

“Why, she wouldn’t do that — Miss Stuyve- 
sant wouldn’t do that ! And what reason 
could she possibly have?” said Sarah Rogers, 
in bewilderment. 

“Being ’long of her seemed to set Orindy 
ag’in me; that’s all I know about it,” per- 
sisted Levi, positively. “I thought maybe 
I could set you to use your influence the 
other way. Being own folks, as you 


ii8 


SARAH THE LESS 


might say, it seems as if she might hear 
to you more’n to them that are strangers 
and aliens.” Levi cast a suspicious, disap- 
proving glance in the direction of the inner 
room. 

“I don’t think that Orinda is one to be 
easily influenced,” said Sarah Rogers, medita- 
tively. “I think she makes up her own 
mind and wouldn’t listen to either Sarah 
Stuyvesant or me. But I always liked you, 
Levi, always, and if there is anything I can 
say to influence Orinaa I will certainly 

say it.” 

“And you’ll not tell her what I came for?” 
Levi nodded again darkly toward the inner 
door — -“nor let Orindy know that I asked 

you to help me?” 

As Sarah Rogers let him out at the door 
he turned to drop a half-whisper, heavy with 
emphasis: “If you don’t live to find out that 
she’s a cur’us little piece, I’ll miss my 

guess !” “She” meant Sarah Stuyvesant as 

a cautious side-glance showed. “She ap- 
pears to me to be one of the kind that’s got 
the power of making folks do just as they’re 
a mind to. If she’d lived in the times when 
folks believed in witchcraft” — 


SARAH THE LESS 


II9 

Sarah laughed, absently and mirthlessly. 
She formed a sudden resolve to take counsel 
of some one. It should not be Miss Almy, 
who had warned her of Sarah Stuyvesant, 
nor her mother, because she was yet too 
feeble to hear the exciting story of the ring. 
It should not be Uncle Abram, for he 
seemed to be one of those whom Sarah the 
Less had bewitched. Orinda? In spite of 
a lack of education, Orinda seemed capable 
of giving sound and sensible advice — unless 
it might prove that Levi’s suspicion was cor- 
rect and that she, too, had fallen under Sarah 
Stuyvesant’s spell. 

^‘I think I’ll go home to-night and spend 
to-morrow if you don’t mind being left 
alone,” she said, suddenly, at the supper 
table. “Josiah Stover will take me along 
with the milk cans, or I can walk.” 

Sarah Stuyvesant looked up in surprise 
from the baked beans which always seemed 
to assume for her the character of a penance. 

“I thought we were going together to 
spend next Sunday,” she said. 

“I have a special reason for going to- 
night,” said Sarah Rogers. Her tone was 
cold, and, in spite of herself, a trifle severe 


120 


SARAH THE LESS 


to Sarah Stuyvesant since she had seen that 
ring. 

Sarah the Less rose suddenly from the 
table. 

“I can’t make you like me! You’re even 
worse to me than you were !” she said, in 
a voice that shook pathetically. “But I will 
show you that I am in earnest — that there 
is something of me. I’ve got the money 
all ready to pay for Polly Pendexter’s gown. 
Of course I — I haven’t earned it all yet, but 
I wanted to change Mrs. Pendexter’s feelings 
toward your mother. I realized, when your 
mother was ill, how much it worried her, 
and I couldn’t bear to wait!” 

She rushed out of the room and came 
back to thrust a roll of bills into Sarah 
Rogers’ hands. 

“Three hundred and fifty dollars ! That is 
surely enough, isn’t it? I know you want 
to pay it yourself, and the responsibility was 
yours, of course. You never will like any- 
thing that I do” — Sarah Stuyvesant’s face 
was vividly flushed, and she was excited 
to the point of incoherence — “but, at least, 
now you will own that I have done my 
best!” 


SARAH THE LESS 


I2I 


Sarah Rogers thrust the money away from 
her. She rose from the table and stood 
trembling in all her tall frame. 

“I can’t take it. I can’t 
money!” she cried. 


touch your 


CHAPTER VII 


S ARAH ROGERS’ mind was in a tumult 
of doubt as she hastily dressed herself. 
That Sarah Stuyvesant should have 
stolen the ring and sold it seemed rather 
like the invention of a hackneyed, foolish 
story than a real happening. It could not 
be true. ‘T used to read too many com- 
monplace stories ; they have affected my im- 
agination,” she said to herself at one mo- 
ment. At the next moment the over- 
whelming suspicion returned. She knew all 
about Sarah’s allowance; she was constantly 
mourning over its smallness. How could 
she have come into possession of all that 
money? Yet the ring would certainly not 
account for it all. 

‘T must go away and think and ask some 
one else — some one older and wiser than I 
to help me think,” she said to herself. 

The hats had come and Sarah Stuyvesant 
was trying one on before the mirror in the 
living room when she went out. 

“You meant the small one for me and 


122 



“ ‘l BE FEELING KIND OF PEAKED,’ SAID ORINDA.’ 


PAGE 126 




SARAH THE LESS 


123 


you chose my colors — just the right thing! 
It is really almost as pretty as my Paris 
hat !” Sarah the Less pirouetted and gave 
her head a little airy toss. But her face 
was pale and her eyes red-rimmed. “I don’t 
know what you mean 1 Why won’t you take 
the money? You treat me so strangely!” 
she said suddenly. She stood with clasped 
hands before Sarah Rogers, her breath com- 
ing quickly. “If you won’t take it, why 
then I shall assume the right to pay Mrs, 
Pendexter myself ! I have a right to pay it ! 
It is hard enough for me — if you only knew 
how hard! — to get the money.” 

Her lips quivered. Sarah the Greater 
stooped suddenly as if to kiss her. She felt 
a sudden impulse to thrust away all this 
harrowing suspicion. She would believe in 
Sarah Stuyvesant! Yet she drew back. She 
could not — she could not ! Sarah Stuyve- 
sant’s color came and went. 

“I couldn’t wait until I had earned the 
money, as Absalom can. I couldn’t. Then 
your mother would have had no chance with 
the summer people, as she will have when 
the money is paid. I had to get it as I 
could. You don’t know how I got it!” 


124 


SARAH THE LESS 


She paused, looking curiously, breathless into 
Sarah Rogers’ face. 

“No, I don’t know,” said Sarah Rogers, 
and waited as breathless as the other Sarah. 
She could not speak like this if the dreadful 
suspicion were just, she could not ! 

“And I can’t tell you,” continued Sarah 
Stuyvesant. “But you ought to be glad 
that I can pay for that dress at once. Why 
won’t you take the money?” 

“Wait until I come back! I can’t tell 
you now,” said Sarah Rogers, and she said 
it stiffly and coldly. Had the girl so little 
moral sense that the matter of the ring 
seemed a trifle? 

Sarah Rogers rode along among Josiah 
Stover’s milk cans, with her mind full of 
miserable questionings. Would it not be her 
duty, for Absalom’s sake, her duty even on 
purely moral grounds, to denounce Sarah 
Stuyvesant and tell Professor McMillan where 
he could find his ring? Sarah Stuyvesant’s 
face, worn and pathetic as it had grown to 
look of late — even more pathetic for the 
merry, tip-tilted nose of Absalom’s scorn — 
arose before her and her heart thrilled with 
pity — pity and a blessed, hopeful doubt. 


SARAH THE LESS 


125 


She would see what Orinda thought; just 
such people as Orinda sat upon juries; clear- 
headed, sagacious, unbiased. She was sure 
that Orinda would be unbiased in spite of 
the nonsense that Levi Tackaberry had 
talked about her having been bewitched by 
Sarah Stuyvesant. 

She went, among the milk cans, directly 
over to Uncle Abram’s. It was on Josiah 
Stover’s way and she could easily walk back 
home. It was Saturday evening and Uncle 
Abram would be gone to rehearsal; he sang 
a high and quavering tenor in the “seats,” 
where he had sung since he was a young 
man, and never missed a rehearsal or a Sun- 
day service. 

Sarah paused upon the porch to collect 
her thoughts. She had not yet decided just 
how far she would confide in Orinda. 
Coupled with the desire for counsel was the 
strong shrinking from possible injustice to 
Sarah Stuyvesant. But Orinda, who liked 
Sarah, would be just and would keep the 
secret. 

She could hear Orinda stepping to and 
fro, clearing away her supper dishes and sing- 
ing a mournful hymn. Orinda always sang 


126 


SARAH THE LESS 


hymns as an accompaniment to her house- 

work, their character varying with her state 
of mind. 

‘‘On Jordan's stormy banks I stand” rose 
high and shrill from the kitchen. Ever 

since she was a little girl Sarah had observed 
that Orinda sang “Jordan’s stormy banks” 
when she was very much depressed. 

When she stood in the lighted kitchen 
she saw that the roses that still blossomed 
on Orinda’s forty-year-old cheeks were quite 
faded out and their color seemed to have 

gone into the rims round her eyes. This 

was so unusual a sight that Sarah cried out 
in astonishment. 

“I be feeling kind of peaked,” said Orinda, 
with candid dejection. “It’s a shame to let 
yourself feel so in the Lord’s good world, 
but — but I don’t know as there’s anything 
much harder than to be disappointed in them 
you set by.” 

Sarah Rogers sat down in Uncle Abram’s 
great chintz-covered arm-chair and heaved a 
long, long sigh. She had “set by” Sarah 
Stuyvesant. It was all wrong to choose her 
for a roommate; she had been told so; but 
she had pitied her because she was going to 


SARAH THE LESS 


127 


be expelled, and in the wake of the pity love 
had come. It had quenched the petty envy 
and jealousy that had threatened it; it had made 
her forget the act that had brought such 
trouble upon them, and it was because she 
felt that the love was there that she was 
trying to harden her heart. She did not 
want to be weak and foolish; she did not 
want to be deceived. 

As in a flash it was all revealed to her, when 
Orinda made her moan that there was 
nothing much harder than to be disappointed 
in those you loved. 

‘That’s it, Orinda ! that’s it !” she cried. 
“And when you have got to show what they 
are — to bring open disgrace upon them!” — 

“Why, land — why, land I” Orinda dropped 
the dish towel and stood dismayed. “You 
don’t expect it’s bringing real disgrace upon 
him, do you?” 

“You — you mean I.evi. I was thinking of 
some one else,” said Sarah, the cause of 
Orinda’s trouble slowly penetrating her con- 
sciousness. 

“I expect you know that I’ve jilted him. 
I expect it’s all over Gilboa by this time. 
But folks don’t know the reason why. 


128 


SARAH THE LESS 


There’s a good many that would say — T told 
you so,’ if they did.” Orinda relapsed into 
silent meditation for a moment after she 
had said this, and Sarah tried to turn her 
thoughts sympathetically away from her own 
troubles to Orinda’s. 

“You know Levi has the name of being 
snug,” said Orinda, slowly, at length. “I’ve 
known he was some snug, but I never would 
give in, as my sister Marilly wanted me to, 
that he wanted to marry me for what I’ve 
saved up. I told him that the Eastport bank 
had failed and I didn’t tell him that I took 
my money out a year ago. I told him that 
I’d lent my money that I’d saved up to furnish 
the house when there wasn’t any great likelihood 
that I’d get it back again for a good while 
if I ever did, and that’s true enough; for 
everybody knows there’s a risk in lending 
without security. I told him I couldn’t 
marry him on account of them two things 
and he — he cleared out quicker’n scat !” 
Two great tears rolled slowly down over 
poor Orinda’s high cheek bones. 

“But, Orinda, I’m sure he — he thought you 
meant it !” stammered Sarah, trying desper- 
ately to think how she could convince 


SARAH THE LESS 


129 


Orinda of this fact without betraying Levi’s 
confidence. 

‘'Why hadn’t he up and said that money 
was of no consequence between us two?” 
demanded Orinda. “That if my money was 
all gone, why, he was ready and willing to 
take care of me? That was what I was 
looking for ! I’d made up my mind that 
was just what he would say. I’d even re- 
peated it over and over again to Marilly, 
in my mind, triumphant. But he never 
said any such a thing ! He never said a 
word ! And it’s all over between us. I’m 
making up a bundle of things he has 
given me to send back to him.” Orinda 
resolutely repressed her tears, but her lip 
quivered. 

On the sitting-room table Sarah could see 
a collection of treasures ; not a large col- 
lection, although Levi and Orinda had been 
“keeping company” for more than fifteen 
years, for Levi was “snug” ; — there was a 
large and ornate photograph album and a 
bouquet of crystallized grasses, dyed in rain- 
bow hues, a brush and comb in a cheap 
case, and a painted tin tray, and a feather 
duster, doubtless from his own wares. Cheap 


9 


130 


SARAH THE LESS 


and tasteless tokens of affection, but bedewed 
with Orinda’s tears. 

“Orinda, I’m sure it’s all a mistake! I’m 
sure that you’re the very apple of Levi’s eye,” 
said Sarah. “He thought you meant it and 
he was so hurt that he didn’t say anything.” 

“Men folks are dreadful dull,” admitted 
Orinda, doubtfully. “But it seems as if the 
dullest of ’em ought to know that folks 
don’t always mean just what they say. I 
rather guess Levi would if he was a mind 
to.” 

“Take my advice and don’t return his 
presents I” said Sarah, earnestly, after a 
moment’s reflection. “I prophesy that Levi 
will get his courage up and come round ask- 
ing you to reconsider!” 

“You’re a real comforter!” said Orinda. 
“It isn’t to everyone that I’d own up how 
I feel about Levi, but I guess you would 
kind of suspect it, anyhow, seeing you’ve 
got such an old head on your shoulders. 
Your mother is doing real well, isn’t she? 
and I declare she has had the best kind of 
nursing. If that isn’t the best-hearted and 
faithfullest little soul that ever I saw !” 

“Sarah, you mean. She is, isn’t she?” said 


SARAH THE LESS 


I3I 

Sarah Rogers, eagerly, and her heart grew 
warm — and then chilled suddenly, remember- 
ing why she had come. 

“It’s real wonderful to see a city girl, not 
brought up to work, take hold as she did,” 
said Orinda, heartily. “Spunky wa’n’t any 
word for her! She’d burn her fingers to the 
bone and never let the tears come. It 
seemed as if she couldn’t do enough for 
you. It’s no wonder she felt so after getting 
you into such trouble. She told me about 
her spoiling the wedding dress. It seemed 
as if she thought of nothing but getting 
your mother well and then earning money 
to pay for that dress. If she couldn’t earn 
enough teaching French she wanted to come 
over here next summer and keep bees, the way 
she’d seen it done in the south of France ! 
She said ’twas sure to pay where there was 
such buckwheat fields. I guess she put 
paying up into Absalom’s head, didn’t she? 
I don’t know but it’s kind of a pity that 
he shouldn’t stick to his studies, seeing Pro- 
fessor McMillan urges him to, but there! I 
do like to see him so spunky.” 

Orinda talked on, while only murmured re- 
sponses came from Sarah Rogers. It was 


132 


SARAH THE LESS 


difficult, more difficult that she had expected it 
would be, to tell her suspicions of Sarah 
Stuyvesant to Orinda. 

“I do hope the poor little cretur isn’t 
going to work herself to death going to 
school and teaching, too,” continued Orinda. 
“Of course it was a dreadful caper to wear 
that dress and spoil it so, and I expect ’twas 
nothing in the world but that that made 
your mother sick. But when anybody tries 
to make up for it as she is trying” — 

Sarah Rogers rose, suddenly. 

“I only thought I would ride over with 
Josiah Stover, since he was coming this 
way,” she said. “Now, remember, I’m sure 
that Levi wouldn’t have taken ‘No’ for an 
answer if he hadn’t been sure that you meant 
it. He’ll come back for another answer 
when he has time to think it over.” 

Orinda shook her head, doubtfully, al- 
though her face had brightened a little. 

“Sometimes it seems as if other folks were 
right about him and he was too — too thrifty. 
Almost as if he didn’t care about anything 
but money! But when you’ve set by folks 
for a long time it’s terrible hard to leave off, 
whatever they be. And you can’t help feel- 


SARAH THE LESS 


133 


ing that you wouldn’t have done it if they 
hadn’t been good at heart.” 

‘'You do feel so, don’t you?” said Sarah 
Rogers, eagerly. She stood still upon the 
porch, although the snow was beginning to 
fall, and the wind was keen. “And I think 
we ought to believe in people, don’t you? 
unless there is absolute proof against them 
— absolute proof!” 

“I expect so,” said Orinda. “We’re all 
poor, short-sighted creturs that need the 
Lord’s leadings, anyhow. And — too — I ex- 
pect there’s kind of a warp in folks’s 
natures sometimes, and you’ve got to put up 
with it anyhow and set by ’em just the 
same — that is, if they’re your own or — or 
them that the Lord meant for you.” 

It was evident that Orinda’s whole mind 
was bent upon Levi, while Sarah — Sarah was 
thinking solely of her roommate, Sarah the 
Less, the girl of the frivolous mind. “Them 
that the Lord meant for you.” Was there 
a meaning in the providence of God that 
brought people together, or was it all mere 
chance? Had Sarah Stuyvesant been sent to 
her and she to Sarah? 

She stood in the chilling wind and won- 


134 


SARAH THE LESS 


dered. As she turned the corner of the 
house she heard Orinda singing again: — 

‘‘God moves in a mysterious way, 

His wo-onders to-o perform’' — 

Orinda was cheerful, hopeful again; that 
was Orinda’s strongest-hearted hymn. And 
she, Sarah Rogers, had gained a new under- 
standing of herself, but she was still doubt- 
ful, doubtful. There was Absalom to think 
of — Absalom and duty. 

Her mother and Absalom greeted her with 
surprise and immediate inquiries for Sarah 
Stuyvesant. Why had she come as soon as 
Sarah returned? and why had not Sarah 

come also? Would not she be lonesome? 
They were so fond of Sarah ! But Sarah 
Rogers had no jealousy; she was sure of 
that. It warmed her heart to hear Sarah’s 
praises. 

“She is good and true, isn’t she?” she 

said, eagerly, “good and true!” 

She explained that she wished to see 

Orinda ; that was why she had come. As 

for Sarah Stuyvesant, she had not thought 
of asking her to come, since she had but 
just returned. 


SARAH THE LESS 


135 


Absalom looked at her curiously after her 
eager outburst that had changed, suddenly, 
into matter-of-fact explanation. 

“You don’t seem to really think she’s 
good,” he said, gruffly. “I said in the first 
place that you only took to her because her 
nose turned up and you were freckled. I 
don’t think you like her at all, now. You 
don’t realize how much of a girl she is.” 

This was a great deal for Absalom to say. 
He seemed to feel that it was, himself, and 
looked shamefaced. He was sitting at the 
table to-night in his rough working clothes, as 
Sarah disliked to see him. Absalom was a 
boy who liked to keep his hair smooth and 
wear a pretty-colored necktie — and he looked 
tired. This work might be making a man 
of him ; Sarah honored and approved of him 
for insisting upon doing it, but if Sarah 
Stuyvesant had cruelly, wickedly brought it 
upon him, she could not forgive her! 

“I — I don’t quite know what she is!” she 
said, impulsively. 

“Well, she’s great — that’s what she is!” 
said Absalom. “A girl that there’s no non- 
sense about ; a girl who likes to have a 
good time and who knows how to help a 


136 


SARAH THE LESS 


fellow to put his best foot forward ; and 
who can bear things like an Indian and — 
and makes a fellow ashamed not to do as 
much as she can !” Absalom was almost in- 
coherent between his strong feelings and his 
embarrassed swallows of tea. 

Sarah looked at him in wondering silence; 
Absalom so seldom approved of a girl ! Her 
reticence seemed cold and discordant, and 
Absalom resented it. 

'‘She’s more of a girl than some folks 
that is a great deal bigger ! ” pursued 
Absalom, evidently becoming sheepish under 
Sarah’s surprise and relapsing into boyish 
self-defense. 

"Absalom, I can’t bear your doing this ! 
I can’t bear your giving up your lessons ! 
Professor will not be in Highbury another 
year,” said Sarah, suddenly. 

"I’m going to pay for that ring if it takes 
me a year of wood-chopping! I’ve under- 
taken it and I’m going to do it!” said Ab- 
salom. Sarah heaved a sigh. Absalom 
would always be queer and "set.” 

"It’s well that he hasn’t got any worse 
notion into his head,” his mother had said, 
philosophically. 


SARAH THE LESS 


137 


'‘Absalom, can’t you remember what you 
did with that ring?” asked Sarah, suddenly. 

“You can’t help getting mixed up when 
you’re trying to do so many things at 
once,” said Absalom, slowly. “I could have 
sworn, almost, that I slipped it on to Sarah 
Stuyvesant’s finger. And she — she thought 
it might possibly have caught in the fringe 
of the ragged old shawl that she wore, for 
she remembered that she thought she heard 
something hit against the staff she carried — 
she was a lame beggar, you know.” 

“Why didn’t she look? Why didn’t she 
say something?” flashed Sarah. 

“Why, she didn’t know that I tried to 
put the ring on her finger, if that zms the 
way of it. She said she didn’t. You wouldn’t 
think anything of a little sound like that, you 
know, when you had no reason to suppose 
that it meant anything. I did wish that she 
had told me before she did. Levi had sold 
the rags, then, at Barnby’s mills. I went 
down to the mills and they let me look over 
the rags. But Levi’s were all mixed up with 
others and there were mountains of them. I 
might as well have looked for a needle in a 
haymow.” 


138 SARAH THE LESS 

“I don’t think a ring would be very likely 
to catch in the fringe of a shawl,” said 
Sarah, reflectively. “And I don’t see how 
you could help knowing, or how she could 
help knowing if you tried to put it on her 
finger.” 

“The shawl was all rags and hitched up 
every way to make it look worse,” ex- 
plained Absalom. “And there was a great 
rush and scramble ; I told the beggars to 
rush and scramble to hide what I was do- 
ing. It wasn’t so strange that the ring 
should be lost, I can tell you ! It isn’t 
likely that it will ever come to light, 
but I shall get it paid for, sometime, 
and be my own man.” Absalom’s voice 
was gruff with feeling, but it sounded really 
manly. 

“I rather guess I shall give up the show 
business” ; — there was a slight twinkle in 
Absalom’s eye as he glanced at his sister — 
“and after I’ve paid for that ring I’m going 
to keep on working until I get enough money 
to give me a start. I’m going to pay my 
own way through college.” Absalom threw 
a challenging glance at his mother and sister 
as if he did not expect to be believed. “It 


SARAH THE LESS 


139 


can be done, you know, if you have got it 
in you !” 

Was this Absalom, the indolent, the un- 
ambitious? How strangely things came 
about! thought Sarah Rogers. It seemed 
true that “all is the gentle will of God” — 
these small, hard trials, the great fatalities, 
and all. 

There came a jingling of tinware and a 
loud “Whoa !” — Levi Tackaberry’s voice at 
the door. 


CHAPTER VIII 


EVI TACKABERRY brought a ragged 



old shawl into the kitchen and held 
it up for inspection. 

‘T found that amongst a lot of other 
rags that I hadn’t sold after all,” he said, 
‘‘and I brought it along just to satisfy your 
mind that no ring could have stuck to it. 
See ! that fringe is just as smooth as silk.” 
Levi’s countenance, shrewd, though kindly, 
was wrinkled with anxiety. “ I know 
you’ve given up thinking about it and I 
don’t want to stir the matter up again, 
but I should like to convince you that the 
ring never got amongst my rags, wherever 
it went.” 

“You wouldn’t have been to blame if it 
had,” said Absalom. 

“No,” said Levi, doubtfully; “I hope my 
character is above suspicion, but still there 
has always been kind of a feeling in the 
community that tin peddling as an occupa- 
tion was a strain on a man’s morals. 
And some things that have happened lately 


140 



“the doctor frankly expressed a doubt page 152. 

OF THE PATIENT’S RECOVERY,” 


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SARAH THE LESS 


I4I 

have kind of made me think that some 
folks may have been set against me” — 

“Oh, no, no. I’m sure it wasn’t that!” 
cried Sarah. “I’m sure that she — that no 
one would ever think such a thing for a mo- 
ment.” She drew Levi aside and spoke im- 
pressively. “You go right over there to-night, 
Levi, and don’t take ‘No’ for an answer!” 

“But — but you see it was this way,” ob- 
jected Levi. “She told me, for an excuse, 
that the Eastport bank had failed, when I 
happened to know that she took her money 
out of that bank more’n a year ago ! What 
difference does her money make to me? 
’Twas kind of slurring me and made me 
mad to talk as if I wasn’t able to provide 
for her ! I’ve kind of suspected that that 
girl that was over here tried to set her 
against me, and it come over me all at 
once that it might be she had kind of in- 
sinuated that I had got the ring” — 

“Oh, no, oh, no !” cried Sarah Rogers, 
and there was an accent of piteous appeal 
in her voice. Must she hear more evidence 
against Sarah after she had resolved to believe 
her innocent? Certainly Orinda had implied 
nothing of that kind. “You go right over 


142 


SARAH THE LESS 


and tell Orinda what you just told me — 
that you care nothing about her money, and 
it will all come right,” she said, earnestly. 

Levi went. One could tell by the jingling 
of the tins that he was going rapidly. 

Sarah was tempted to share her doubts and 
fears with her mother, with whom she had 
hitherto shared all her troubles, but as she 
was still weak, physically, though in a happy 
and hopeful state of mind, she shrank from 
disturbing her. 

Mrs. Rogers said that she felt almost as if 
the ruining of Polly Pendexter’s wedding dress 
that had seemed such a grievous thing were 
a providence. It had been the means of de- 
veloping Absalom so astonishingly. And she 
loved that little girl; she had been so brave 
and self-sacrificing. If she had had the right 
kind of a bringing up she never could have 
worn that dress; she was sure that Sarah 
Stuyvesant had a fine and noble nature, now 
that something had happened to bring it out. 
She was being developed like Absalom. Sarah 
Rogers assented hopefully, trying to thrust 
away the lurking doubt. 

“Be sure to bring Sarah home with you 
the next time you come,” her mother called 


SARAH THE LESS 


143 


after her as she set out for Highbury, Mon- 
day morning. 

She was returning without having con- 
sulted any one, and yet with her mind fully 
made up to believe in Sarah Stuyvesant. 
Professor McMillan’s ring had been lost in 
the barn; that was the natural and probable 
supposition. Some other seminary girl than 
Sarah Stuyvesant had sold that ring to the 
jeweler. She must take Sarah’s money and 
pay for Polly Pendexter’s dress. 

She greeted Sarah the Less with a half- 
apologetic tenderness. But Sarah looked 
at her, doubtfully, and was reticent and con- 
strained. She said nothing about the money 
and they were obliged to hurry to the semi- 
nary, so there was no time for explanation. 

Cordial greetings were showered upon 
Sarah Stuyvesant by the seminary girls, after 
her long absence. Even Miss Almy’s severe 
manner relaxed. She told people, now, that 
the improvement in the girl since she had 
lived with Sarah Rogers was most remark- 
able. Sarah Rogers’ heart was touched by 
the brightening of the pinched and wan little 
face under the girls’ warm friendliness. 

'‘I have treated her dreadfully,” she said 


144 


SARAH THE LESS 


to herself, with keenest self-reproach. “1 was 
wickedly resentful about the spoiling of the 
dress. I have been hard and cold and 
cruelly suspicious. I was worse because I 
was so fond of her, because she disappointed 
me so ; but that is no excuse for me — not 
the least excuse !” 

There were many comments made upon 
Sarah Stuyvesant’s altered looks. In the his- 
tory class Lora Bangs, the actual perpetrator 
of the outrage upon Uncle Abram’s hat — whom 
Sarah Rogers had never liked — sat beside 
her and whispered curious questions about 
Sarah Stuyvesant, with whom she had never 
been on good terms since the affair of the 
hat. 

“She has changed so much ! — and why 
is she so awfully in need of money?” said Lora, 
with eager curiosity. “She is getting all the 
pupils in French that she possibly can, and 
she used to be almost the laziest girl in 
school ! And that isn’t all !” Lora lowered 
her voice, cautiously. “She is selling her 
jewelry! — at least she sold a diamond ring 
at Fluellen’s. Marie Duhring’s brother was 
in the store and saw her. She asked to be 
allowed to buy it back again. I think that 


SARAH THE LESS 


145 


seems so queer and common — to be pawn- 
ing one’s jewelry! Marie said that she 
turned red and white, and looked as if she 
would sink through the floor when she saw 
her brother.” 

It was Sarah Rogers’ turn to recite. Rome 
in the time of the Caesars? — the words 
sounded in her ears and had no mean- 
ing. The room swam before her and she 
grew faint. It was Sarah Stuyvesant who 
ran to help her as she stretched out her 
hands. 

“Oh, go away, go away ! I don’t want 
you to come near me !” cried Sarah Rogers, 
thrusting her away. 

The faintness passed in a moment. Sarah 
scorned such weakness and would not leave 
the class room. She put Sarah Stuyvesant 
resolutely out of her mind and recalled Rome 
and the Caesars so that she was able to 
recite when her turn came again. 

It was Sarah Stuyvesant who was pale and 
ill when they walked homeward together. 
Sarah Rogers, trying to collect her scat- 
tered thoughts, trying to decide what she 
must do in this harrowing dilemma, saw sud- 
denly the white distress of her companion’s 


10 


146 


SARAH THE LESS 


face. Was it illness or the workings of con- 
science? At all events one could not accuse 
or denounce a person in this condition. 

“I think perhaps you would better send 
for the doctor,” Sarah Stuyvesant said, as 
she lay down on the lounge in the living 
room as soon as they reached home. 

Was this because she suspected that her 
evil deed had beert discovered — only as a 
subterfuge to secure sympathy or insure de- 
lay? thought Sarah Rogers, and reproached 
herself, the next moment, for the unworthy 
suspicion, for there was every sign of illness 
in the pathetically worn face of Sarah the 
Less. 

“You ought not to have done that house- 
work! You ought not to have taken care of 
mother ! you were not strong enough !” she 
cried. “I was cruel to let you !” 

“You couldn’t very well have helped your- 
self,” said Sarah the Less, with a sudden 
spark in her eye. “I was just determined to 
be somebody — somebody like you! To make 
a woman of myself after I wore that dress. I 
couldn’t do it; the work didn’t hurt me, but 
— but things have been so hard ! I — I 
couldn’t bear to wait until I had earned the 


SARAH THE LESS 


147 


money. Why, don’t you see that it might be 
a year or more before I could earn all that 
money? and — and you don’t approve — you 
won’t take the money!” 

Her voice broke, her small, worn face 
worked piteously. 

“Don’t — don’t talk about it now! You 
are ill!” cried Sarah Rogers. “You must 
keep quiet. Your head is burning and your 
hands and feet are as cold as ice.” 

She sent for the doctor in haste. Perhaps 
confession would ease Sarah Stuyvesant’s mind, 
but she felt that she could not bear to hear it 
now. What could she say to her? She 
seemed to have no idea of the enormity of the 
deed she had done. She complained that she 
“didn’t approve,” apparently realizing that she 
had been discovered. Was she one of the 
strange people who entirely lacked moral 
sense? Sarah Rogers had heard that there 
were such. 

For Absalom’s sake, for the sake of right 
and justice, Sarah Stuyvesant must be made 
to undo, so far as possible, the wrong that 
she had done, but now, whatever she had 
done, her heart ached with pity for her. The 
hardness was all gone. She seemed so small. 


148 


SARAH THE LESS 


SO young. The girls had done well to call 
her Sarah the Less. 

‘T will be her friend, whatever she has done, 
just so long as she needs me!” said Sarah 
Rogers to herself. Only one who realized 
just how Sarah Rogers felt about such evil 
deeds as Sarah Stuyvesant had committed, 
how every fiber of her nature revolted 
against them, could understand what this 
meant. 

Along with her stern New England rec- 
titude Sarah Rogers had a capacity for lov- 
ing which she developed wonderfully in this 
association with the weaker nature that clung 
to her. 

“Whatever she has done!” Sarah repeated, 
firmly, and bent suddenly and kissed the 
fevered face before she hurried away to sum- 
mon a doctor. 

Sarah the Less had clung to her. 

“You will take the money — say you will 
take the money!” she had begged, half-fran- 
tically. Sarah Rogers had put her gently 
away, saying that she was not well enough to 
talk about it now. 

vShe was delirious with fever before the 
next night. She had been overtaxed, the 


SARAH THE LESS 


149 


doctor said, and seemed to have something 
on her mind that worried her. 

She tried to draw the long breadths of Polly 
Pendexter’s wedding gown through a finger 
ring and cried out that she was being 
smothered in its lace flounce. She sang 
shrilly, beating time with an imaginary staff, 
as if she were marching in the beggar’s 
procession ; she tried to help Absalom with 
his mathematical calculations, counting labori- 
ously on her fingers — arithmetic was not her 
strong point — and then relapsing into the 
monotonous chanting of the multiplication 
table, in French, as if she were saying 
her lesson at the little pension in the 
south of France where her childhood had 
been spent. 

Then she would suddenly become excited 
and frantically beg a jeweler to keep a ring 
until Absalom had chopped wood enough to 
pay for it. 

‘‘She will tell all about the ring! Every 
one who hears her will know !” said Sarah 
Rogers to herself. And she resolved that 
if it were possible to avoid it there should 
not be a strange nurse. When the doctor 
said that she must not undertake to care for 


SARAH THE LESS 


150 

the patient alone, she sent for Orinda. Uncle 
Abram was willing to spare her, he liked ‘‘the 
little gal”; being proud of his domestic tal- 
ents, he declared, also, that he always liked 
“a spell of doing for himself”; it kind of 
rested him. Orinda was glad to come. She 
said that she “set by that little cretur the 
first minute she laid eyes on her, and ’twould 
be a labor of love, if ever anything was, to 
take care of her.” 

At first her presence seemed to make the 
sick girl restless. Without apparently recog- 
nizing her she associated her, in her mind, 
with Levi Tackaberry, and she raved that she 
had torn down Levi Tackaberry’s new house 
and made Levi ill of a fever. 

“The poor little cretur!” Orinda exclaimed, 
with her eyes full of tears. “She’s been 
worrying about that money that I lent her. 
I made her take it, too. It come over me 
all of a sudden, when I knew what a hurry 
she was in to pay for that dress she had 
spoiled, that if I should lend her the money, 
why, I could tell Levi that I couldn’t fur- 
nish the house and so ' kind of find out if 
he did think as much of money as folks said 
he did. I — I didn’t tell you, being so 


SARAH THE LESS 


I5I 

worked up about this poor child,” — Orinda 
blushed as beautifully as if she were twenty 
instead of forty — “but it’s all come right. 
Levi wa’n’t looking for my money!” 

“I’m sure he wasn’t,” said Sarah, but she 
said it absently. “Orinda, you lent Sarah 
money?” she asked, breathlessly. 

“Two hundred and fifty,” said Orinda, con- 
cisely. “I asked her not to tell anybody, 
for I didn’t want Levi to hear of it and 
kind of suspect why I done it.” 

“Two hundred and fifty dollars I” echoed 
Sarah, slowly. And the great thrill of 
joy she had felt died away. Sarah Stuy- 
vesant had offered her more money than 

that to pay for Polly Pendexter’s dress and 
she knew about the ring — she knew! How 
strange a nature was this ! Sarah Stuyvesant 
had really worked and suffered to atone for 
the wrong she had done and then had com- 
mitted this dreadful wickedness. 

“Ain’t it pitiful, now, to see her wring 

them little calloused hands of hers because 
the flour gruel for your mother is burnt?” 
said Orinda, with tears running down her 
cheeks. 

“I ought not to have let her take care 


152 


SARAH THE LESS 


of mother ! I ought not ! She was not 
strong enough !” cried Sarah Rogers, self- 
reproachfully. “Oh, how much might have 
been saved if I had not !” she added to her- 
self. One good thing had come out of it — 
Absalom was becoming a man; but the cost 
had been great — too great ! She kissed 
Sarah’s little calloused hands, she watched 
over her with utter devotion; she closed the 
doors carefully lest in her delirium she should 
divulge her pitiful secret. 

She must not keep the secret ; she could 
not when Sarah was well, but now she would 
protect her — and love her ! Whatever had 
come, whatever could come, she should al- 
ways do that. And so far as was possible 
she would protect her. There came a day 
when it seemed not long that the protection 
would be needed. The doctor frankly ex- 
pressed a doubt of the patient’s recovery. 
The crisis had come and she had but little 
strength. Orinda’s softly-crooned hymns, 
which seemed to soothe the sick girl, changed 
their character. “God moves in a mysterious 
way” gave place to “Jordan’s stormy banks” 
and to a camp-meeting hymn which, even 
now, many years afterwards, rings in Sarah 


SARAH THE LESS 


153 


Rogers’ ears when she recalls the darkened 
room and the tossing head upon the pillow 
— the piquant, childish face so wan and 
changed : — 

“The day is a-wasting, wasting, wasting, 

The day is a-wasting, night draws nigh; 

Lord in the twilight. Lord in the deep night. 

Lord in the midnight, be thou nigh !” 

The doctor was doubtful and they sent 
word to Sarah Stuyvesant’s mother, in Paris, 
who cabled that she was herself too ill to 
come. Her uncle, her only other relative 
of whom they knew, had gone abroad. So 
Sarah the Less was left, a solitary waif and 
stray, to comparative strangers’ hearts and 
hands — and none could have loved her better 
or cared for her more faithfully. 

Sarah Rogers, with what Orinda thought 
exaggerated self-reproach, cried continually, 
“I am to blame for it all!” What she said to 
herself was that if she had been less hard and 
cold, more forgiving about the wearing of 
the dress, which seemed now but a childish 
escapade, she should have won Sarah to con- 
fide in her, she would not have left her so 
alone to allow the strange warp in her 
nature, or the result of her frivolous, unprin- 


154 


SARAH THE LESS 


cipled training, to carry her to such lengths. 
She was to blame! 

Before her loomed an almost greater dread 
than the dread of Sarah’s death; she must tell 
Sarah what she knew. She must force her to 
confess the wrong, or if she would not she 
must denounce her. It would be impossible 
to shield her from the consequences of such 
an act as that. 

Meanwhile there was doubt and they must 
wait — wait with the ancient comfort of the dry 
of Orinda’s hymn to hold them up : — 

“Lord in the midnight, be thou nigh !” 






« 1 1 


I FOUND THAT RING ’LONG WITH THE CORN IN HIS CROPl’ ” 


PAGE 169 




CHAPTER IX 


S ARAH STUYVESANTS childish blue 
eyes, with dark hollows beneath them, 
looked out from a peaked little face, 
but the strained, unnatural look was gone. 
She was weak, but she would come back 
to life and health ; the doctor said she would 
even come back rapidly, because the blessing 
of youth was hers. 

Orinda sang joyful hymns and gay songs. 
Sarah Rogers told stories which Sarah the 
Less loved with a childish love, and read to 
her. The time of convalescence, especially 
with youth to back up hope, is apt to be a 
happy one, and it was sometimes even merry 
in the sick room at 15 Jayne Street. 

The schoolgirls came in relays as soon 
as they were allowed. Sarah jested happily 
because her popularity had so increased in 
her absence. 

“I always said there was more of her than 
there seemed to be,” said one of the more 
serious-minded of them to Sarah Rogers, 
confidentially. Eor the story of the ruined 

155 


SARAH THE LESS 


156 

dress and Sarah’s effort to atone for the 
trouble she had made had leaked out. Grace 
Albee knew it, and Grace was known as “The 
Highbury Journal.” 

“Would they have to know all the rest?” 
queried Sarah Rogers, inwardly, with a sink- 
ing heart. 

Sarah Stuyvesant had begun to follow her 
about with a wistful, questioning gaze ; and 
Sarah Rogers turned her face away when she 
met the gaze. The old shadow was beginning 
to be dark between them. It could not be long 
now — not long before all must be made known, 
was Sarah Rogers’ constant, torturing thought. 

On the first day when she was able to sit 
up all day, Sarah Stuyvesant had thrust her 
hand under the pillow, where she had insisted 
upon keeping her money, and tried again to 
put the three hundred and fifty dollars into 
Sarah’s hand. Sarah had drawn back, with a 
distressed face. 

“Not yet — not yet!” she said. “We will — 
we must talk about it soon.” 

“But there is nothing to talk about!” said 
Sarah Stuyvesant, with a rush of color over 
her pale face. “I had a right to do what I 
did. Every one borrows.” 


SARAH THE LESS 


157 


Orinda had then told her that things had 
come right with her and Levi, and that she 
was at liberty to tell that she had lent her 
money. Orinda, good, guileless soul, had 
listened to all Sarah’s delirious wanderings 
without suspicion. But she should not have 
suspected, herself, thought Sarah Rogers, if 
she had not seen the ring in the jeweler’s 
shop. She should not have known if Lora 
Bangs had not told her that Sarah Stuyvesant 
had sold a ring. 

Sarah Rogers had listened with averted 
face, saying nothing. 

“I like being so upright and strong as 
you — I like it !” continued Sarah the Less, 
earnestly. “I never knew anything like it 
before, and I tried to be so myself. But 
it is hard to be so — so severe. It is no 
harm to borrow ! It is almost spring, and 
the summer people will be coming to Gil- 
boa. I want the dress paid for before they 
come, so that Mrs. Pendexter will make 
things all right for your mother. It has 
almost killed me to be so to blame for 
things — and you — you have have been so 
good to me and yet you are still so strange 
and hard about the money !” 


158 


SARAH THE LESS 


‘‘Wait until next week — only till next 
week !” Sarah Rogers begged, in a cold 
voice, but with her heart aching with ten- 
derness. It was so winning — this childish 
nature with the strange warp ! 

By the next week the patient was so much 
better that when Uncle Abram sent word that 
he and Absalom wished to come over Satur- 
day to luncheon it was immediately decided 
that they should be allowed to come. Sarah 
Stuyvesant clapped her hands in childish glee 
at the prospect. She wished to cook her famous 
dish of sweetbreads and oysters, but it was 
feared that the effort would be too much for 
her strength. Moreover Uncle Abram’s mes- 
sage had been to the effect that he wished es- 
pecially to bring the viands with him, all pre- 
pared. 

“Your uncle has been cooking-up again,” 
said Orinda, with an indulgent smile. “If 
there’s anything that makes him feel as if he 
was one of the lords of creation, it’s cooking- 
up. Seems as if he couldn’t stand it to feel as 
if women folks could get the better of him, 
even in that way. And land! I have to say 
to myself ‘Remember Ananias,’ every time he 
asks me if his victuals ain’t good. It’s real 


SARAH THE LESS 


159 


hard to have to hurt his feelings and yet even 
for a man he’s a terrible poor cook. If I don’t 
miss my guess he’ll make a chicken pie, for he 
couldn’t help knowing how dreadful soggy 
that one was he brought over here, and I know 
it’s been a ranklin’ ever since. But it will 
never do for that poor child to eat it. I’ve 
thought more’n once that it wouldn’t be 
strange if this sickness of hers was owing to 
her eating the other one, for all it’s so long 
ago!” 

Sarah Rogers said they would manage to 
have something else and yet not hurt Uncle 
Abram’s feelings. It was a relief to her that 
he was coming; it would put off the evil day 
of disclosure. She need not tell Sarah Stuy- 
vesant what she knew until after that day. 

Sarah the Less grew more and more light- 
hearted in the prospect of the luncheon. It 
was very strange, thought Sarah Rogers, 
that she did not suspect that she was dis- 
covered. 

Uncle Abram appeared, on Saturday morn- 
ing, carrying a huge basket and with all his 
grim wrinkles relaxed. Behind him came Ab- 
salom, dressed in his best, and with a new,^ 
subdued happiness in his face that made his 


l60 SARAH THE LESS 

sister suddenly feel that wood-chopping was 
the very best work in the world for a boy. 

‘‘I got through early to-day and I’m going 
to see Professor McMillan ; that’s why I’m 
so dressed up,” he explained. 

‘‘Now don’t you go to putting the cart be- 
fore the horse, Absalom !” said Uncle Abram, 
hastily. “I want to tell ’em all about this 
chicken pie !” 

What Professor McMillan could have to do 
with the chicken pie didn’t seem quite clear, 
but Uncle Abram was in one of his rare 
moods of overflowing good humor, and nf 
one ever interfered with these. ^ 

Orinda cast glances full of warning upon 
Sarah Rogers as Uncle Abram proudly 
opened his basket. They meant: “We must 
protect our patient from that chicken pie !” 
How happy was Orinda, thought Sarah 
Rogers, to have no heavier care than this 
upon her mind ! 

Uncle Abram would allow no one but 
himself to touch his chicken pie. He took 
it out of the basket and set it upon the 
table, and he cut and served it. 

“There is something very remarkable about 
this chicken pie,” he remarked. 


SARAH THE LESS. l6l 

‘‘It’s good !” exclaimed Orinda, who had 
just eaten her first mouthful, and her face 
beamed with cheerful wonder. 

Uncle Abram frowned a little; there had 
been a slightly uncomplimentary sugges- 
tion about her ready response and its tone of 
surprise; but he smiled broadly the next mo- 
ment; it was so undeniably good a pie! It 
entirely removed the sting of remembrance of 
that other pie from his mind. 

Orinda decided that it was light enough for 
the invalid to eat, and Uncle Abram constantly 
'iscovered dainty bits for her. He almost for- 
got his own luncheon, an unheard-of thing for 
Uncle Abram. 

Sarah the Less sat in a great armchair at the 
table, waited upon assiduously and petted until 
her little, wan face was all alight. She looked 
almost well again, and her tip-tilted nose, 
which gave her face a merry look, was no longer 
so incongruous as it had been in her illness. 

“Appears as if considerable had happened 
since you two gals began to get your school- 
ing together, don’t it?” remarked Uncle 
Abram, when his mind had been wholly set at 
ease by the unquestionable success of his 
frosted sponge cake. 


SARAH THE LESS 


162 

“If he’s got to frosting and made it come 
right, he’ll be dreadful hard to get along with. 
I ain’t sorry I said ‘Yes’ to Levi!” Orinda 
whispered, aside, to Sarah Rogers. 

“And as you might say the schooling ain’t 
any great part of what’s happened,” continued 
Uncle Abram, reflectively. “For my part I al- 
ways said that schooling was something that 
folks could dispense without. I calculate you 
have learned some things that ain’t wrote 
down in the books !” 

Sarah the Less glanced timidly at Sarah the 
Greater, who avoided her eyes. 

“I have been telling my niece that she 
knew how to pick and choose better than I 
did,” pursued Uncle Abram, looking, with 
quizzical kindness, at the lesser Sarah. “Ap- 
pears as if hardly any two girls could have 
suited each other and got along together bet- 
ter than you two !” 

“Oh, why wouldn’t Uncle Abram stop?” 
thought Sarah Rogers. Her face was scarlet 
with embarrassment and Sarah Stuyvesant kept 
stealing those shy, wistful glances at it. 

“Now the day you sat down on my hat I 
should skurce have thought” — 

“Oh, please, don’t say I sat down on your 


SARAH THE LESS 


163 

hat!” begged Sarah Stuyvesant. suppose it 
was just as bad to make Lora Bangs do it, 
but” — 

“Just as bad,” said Sarah Rogers, and she 
did not smile. Even although she was dis- 
agreeable, a jarring note in the general con- 
cord, she would not fail to try to show to Sarah 
her strange lack of moral sense. 

“Em not such a child as I was then, anyway,” 
said Sarah Stuyvesant. 

“ ’Twas considerable many months ago,” 
smiled Orinda. 

“ ’Tisn’t time that counts,” said Absalom, and 
his voice was husky with a boy’s diffidence in 
speaking of what he feels most. “Sometimes 
a fellow takes a start to grow. And I suppose 
it’s the same way with a girl.” 

“There’s a sight of growing pains that we 
all have to have,” said Orinda, gently, with a 
sympathizing glance at both Sarah Stuyvesant 
and Absalom. “I aint so old but what I’ve 
known what they be myself, lately.” 

Uncle Abram leaned back in his chair sud- 
denly and heaved a long sigh. 

“I declare, Orindy, even when you get to 
be my age some of them pains is likely to 
get hold of you ! I’ve had ’em lately my- 


164 


SARAH THE LESS 


self!” He looked about him in a startled, 
shamefaced way, as if he had said more than 
he meant to. “I expect you can’t even get 
to be a master good cook without feeling 
some of them growing pains !” he added, with 
a light laugh. 

There was silence round the table for a few 
minutes, the silence that is apt to follow at 
such a time the touching of any but the light- 
est chords of life. 

Growing pains I ■ Sarah Rogers wondered, a 
little bitterly, if they were what she was hav- 
ing to suffer. She had been gaining a know- 
ledge of human nature, but she was baffled and 
disheartened. The simple, trying experiences 
of life which Orinda thought had caused only 
“growing pains” were not as simple as they 
seemed ! What would they say when they 
should know all the truth, as they must know 
it soon? It seemed hard and cruel to crush 
little butterfly Sarah with the truth. It 
seemed as if one ought to be able to say, 
“This would have been a dreadful deed, a 
crime, for any responsible person, but you 
are a child — a child !” But one could not 
say that — not even with as much truth as on 
the day when Uncle Abram’s hat was sat 


SARAH THE LESS 1 65 

Upon. Sarah Stuyvesant had developed into 
a woman. 

“This is a curious kind of a world,” re- 
sumed Uncle Abram, sententiously, after the 
pause; “whatever way you look at it, it’s 
curious. And queer things are continually 
happening. Some of ’em are most as queer 
as the yarns that old Cap’ll Amos Toothaker 
used to tell, sitting in the store. He was 
mate of the Flying Dolphin that sailed for 
foreign parts. When you get off among 
them gorillas and cannibals and such folks it 
seems as if ’most anything might happen and 
be according to nater. They’re so out of all 
nater as you might say, anyhow. But where 
a thing happens right in our own barns, as 
you might say” — Here Uncle Abram and 
Absalom exchanged significant glances and 
Uncle Abram put his hand upon his vest 
pocket. 

What did it mean? They listened breath- 
lessly to hear what strange thing had hap- 
pened “in our own barns.” 

But Uncle Abram went on to tell one of 
Captain Toothaker’s remarkable yarns, in 
which mermaids and man eaters and wild 
men figured, and to which no one listened 


SARAH THE LESS 


1 66 

but Absalom. It was told somewhat ab- 
sent-mindedly; Uncle Abram evidently had a 
tale in reserve which he was rolling as a 
sweet morsel under his tongue. 

“Now that ain’t any queerer, maybe, for 
them foreign parts than things that I’ve 
known to happen right here in Gilboa before 
this part of the world,” he remarked, when 
he had finished his tale. 

He began another one of Captain Tooth- 
aker’s yarns, but Sarah Stuyvesant inter- 
rupted him. She had half risen from her arm- 
chair and she leaned over the table toward 
him, her face aglow, her slight figure tremb- 
ling. 

“I know — I know what has happened!” she 
cried. “I know why you’re so pleased 1 I 
know why Absalom is going to see Professor 
McMillan I” 

“Well, now I’m pleased because I’ve 
had such a master good luncheon, of my 
own cooking, in such good company,” said 
Uncle Abram, facetiously. “And Absalom 
isn’t going to see Professor McMillan be- 
cause he has given up wood-chopping, are 
you, Absalom?” 

“It gives a fellow muscle — and money,” 


SARAH THE LESS 


167 


said Absalom, very gruffly, indeed. “I expect 
to chop for Orrin Cressy till spring, anyway. 
But Fm going to have a little time off for 
lessons.’’ 

Sarah Stuyvesant’s face, that had darkened 
slowly, brightened again. 

Uncle Abram’s fingers moved toward his 
vest pocket again, and he smiled at her — 
smiled so genially, so jovially, that he 
scarcely looked like Uncle Abram. 

‘‘You’ve found the ring!” cried Sarah Stuy- 
vesant, joyfully. “Oh, say you have! Fve 
been more to blame than I could bear to say! 
I saw a sparkle on the floor and I thought 
nothing of it ; if I had not been so stupid ! 
Say you have found it !” 

Found the ring! Sarah Rogers gazed in 
wonder, her heart beating like a trip hammer 
in her ears, as Uncle Abram drew a ring 
from his pocket, a ring with a flashing dia- 
mond and with black enamel laid upon its 
gold. 

Had he been to Fluellen’s? What did 
it mean? Had she made a strange mistake? 
If only Uncle Abram would not be so slow 
of speech ! 

“Now, you just listen to this! And what- 


SARAH THE LESS 


1 68 

ever may be thought of Cap’n Toothaker’s, 
this yarn is true ! When I made up my mind to 
make a chicken pie to fetch over here, I looked 
round amongst my old hens and thinks I 
they’ll be too tough. When a fowl has to 
be parboiled all to rags before it’s fit to 
bake, why there’s no taste to the pie, and 
any experienced cook will tell you so.” 

Uncle Abram delivered himself of this cu- 
linary knowledge with an air of great impor- 
tance and grave headshaking. 

“So when I looked round amongst my pul- 
lets and they were all laying, every one, it 
seemed a sin and a shame to kill ’em. I hadn’t 
but two young roosters, but I remembered hear- 
ing Absalom say that they had more than they 
wanted to keep, so I just carried over one of 
my pullets and changed it for a rooster. That 
rooster was pecking round over the barn 
floors and in the stalls” — 

“I’d swept and swept !” interpolated Ab- 
salom. 

“Now don’t you go to putting the cart 
before the horse ! I’m telling this,” said 
Uncle Abram, with a frown. 

“The rooster was pecking round and he 
had pecked up more’n corn from that barn 


SARAH THE LESS 1 69 

floor! When I come to dress him I found 
that ring ’long with the corn in his crop 1” 

Sarah Stuyvesant clapped her hands for 
joy as they all gathered round Uncle Abram 
to see the ring. 

'‘I declare I’m real glad for you, Absa- 
lom, and for more’n you,” said Orinda, fairly 
weeping for joy. “Levi, he was real wor- 
ried for fear folks would think ’twas in his 
rags.” 

“It makes a fellow feel as if he had lost 
about a hundred pounds weight off him,” 
said Absalom. “But where that rooster could 
have found that ring after I had swept and 
swept” — 

“Land I That great big barn floor is full 
of chinks and crannies,” said Orinda. “You 
might have swept the ring into one of ’em 
and the rooster pecked it out. It don’t appear 
to me so dreadful strange.” 

Uncle Abram resented this view of Orinda’s. 
He said, “If ’twas printed in a paper, folks 
would think ’twas like one of Cap’n Tooth- 
aker’s yarns.” 

Sarah Rogers had looked and listened, 
standing with clasped hands, her breath com- 
ing quickly and her face pale. She stretched 


170 


SARAH THE LESS 


out her hands suddenly toward Sarah the 
Less, her self-control all gone in a rain of 
tears. 

“O Sarah, Sarah, can you ever forgive me?” 
she cried. 

Sarah Stuyvesant, wondering, drew the out- 
stretched arms about her neck. 

“Were you so angry with me because I 
brought the trouble upon Absalom by help- 
ing him to have the show?” she asked. “I 
felt to blame — it has worried me so ! Oh, I 
am so thankful that it has all come right ! 
And you will take the money now and pay 
for Polly Pendexter s dress?” 

“I can’t tell you what I thought, oh, I 
can’t tell you !” cried Sarah Rogers. “It was 
such a cruel suspicion ! And yet — and yet 
things happened so strangely, I could hardly 
help it! Yet if I hadn’t been self-righteous 
and cold and hard” — 

“You have been good to me — always good 
to me !” cried Sarah the Less, “except about the 
money for the dress. Being with you has 
made a woman of me ! I don’t want to 
know what you suspected — don’t ever tell me ! 
It’s no wonder, after what I did about the 
dress” — 


SARAH THE LESS 


I7I 

“What’s that about the dress?” asked Uncle 
Abram. “I just took and fixed that up, see- 
ing how ’twas worrying your mother when she 
was sick, and the money isn’t owing to any- 
body but me. Your mother said that you 
girls didn’t want me to know it, but I kind of 
coaxed it out of her. I never thought. Niece 
Sarah, that this schooling of yours wa’n’t go- 
ing to cost anything but the Injin meal you 
lived on !” 

Uncle Abram was still good-natured in 
the face of all this ! What growing pains he 
must have suffered! his niece thought, won- 
dering. 

“I can pay you — I have the money!” cried 
Sarah the Less, eagerly. 

“ ’Twas a hundred dollars. Mr. Pendexter 
said that was all the actual cost of the dam- 
age done. They got new stuff for the dress 
and had it made shorter so they could take 
some out of the flounce. Pendexter said 
nobody need pay, but I told him Gilboa 
folks were honest and the little gal that 
done the mischief, she was as honest as 
daylight, too, and working her fingers to the 
bone” — 

Sarah Stuyvesant’s face was radiant. “Did 


172 


SARAH THE LESS 


you tell him that living with Sarah had made 
me different?” she cried. 

'‘No, I didn’t, because living with other 
folks won’t fetch out what ain’t in you. I 
shouldn’t wonder if you gals had kind of 
helped one t’other along” — 

“Only a hundred dollars!” repeated Sarah, 
happily. “I can buy father’s ring back after 
I have taught a while. Mr. Fluellen gave me 
fifty dollars for it and said he would keep it 
for a while so that I might buy it if I could. 
And I got another fifty for my Paris gown 
and hat. Orinda, I can pay you back your 
two hundred and fifty and you can furnish 
your house after all I” 

Orinda flushed and looked shamefaced. 

“I should kind of take a pride in doing it 
now Pve found out that Levi is all he ought 
to be. It’s been worth considerable to me to 
find out that Levi really thought more of me 
than he did of my money! Seems as if things 
had kind of worked together for good, for all 
of us. I expect they be doing that always on 
the Lord’s providence, only we can’t always 
see it.” 

“I can’t — I can’t believe that he meant me 
to think such a dreadful thing!” cried Sarah 


SARAH THE LESS 


173 


Rogers, with a strangling sob in her throat. 
“Oh, I can’t bear to tell you what I thought!” 
She clung to Sarah Stuyvesant as if they 
had changed places and hers was now the 
childish nature that leaned upon the stronger 
one. 

“Don’t tell me what you thought !” said 
Sarah Stuyvesant, soothingly, “and if I can 
guess. I’ll not think about it! Don’t let’s 
ever speak or think of it again!” 

Absalom started up to go. He was in haste 
to carry the ring to Professor McMillan ; 
moreover, he had an avowed objection to see- 
ing girls have “teary times.” 

He announced, before he went, that he was 
not going to allow Professor McMillan to 
persuade him to abandon wood-chopping alto- 
gether; he meant to chop his way through 
college yet. 

It was years before the two Sarahs spoke 
again about the incident of the ring — after a 
strong friendship had been cemented by 
sisterhood, for Sarah the Less was married 
in the course of time to Professor Absalom 
Rogers, who filled the chair of mathematics in 
College. 

(If I should tell you the professor’s real 


174 


SARAH THE LESS 


name and the real name of the college, it is 
very likely that you would have heard it be- 
fore, for there is much that actually happened 
in this little tale that may read only like a 
queer little comedy.) 



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